The Asking Price
by garamonder
Summary: There is no place in the Games for selflessness. The 74th Hunger Games as seen through the eyes of Peeta Mellark. AU.
1. Chapter 1

In the Hunger Games there is no place for sacrifice.

Katniss Everdeen's screams fall on deaf ears. Well, they don't, because we and the rest of District 12 and maybe all of Panem hear her, and I know those screams will stay with me. The echoes pummel in her desperation as they reverberate through the square and settle beneath my skin. But for all they affect the Peacekeepers who haul Katniss bodily away, thrashing and clawing, the helmets could be soundproofed.

She's begging now, which is worse. Her old stoicism has evaporated. "I volunteer!" she sobs. "I volunteer as tribute!"

It's never worked before and it's not about to work now. That kind of selflessness undermines everything the Games represent and they won't allow it.

The screams are muted now and I spare a look over my shoulder to see she's been carried away. I'm relieved, for her sake. She should be spared the sight of Primrose walking with grim little-girl steps between the Peacekeepers. Passing me on her way to the platform, I see her shirt's become untucked in the back. It makes her seem so much younger.

Effie, too, would appear to be oblivious were it not for the brief twitch of her hands as she adjusts her pink wig. It's hard to imagine anything getting under _her_ skin, you'd have to find it beneath the paint and costumery. She beckons Primrose up onto the stage, wheeling bright-tipped fingers, and firmly squares her shoulders to the assembly.

"What a bright young star," she beams. "I know she'll shine in the Capitol. Let's give her a hand!" She claps her hands pitter-patter. I can hear her nails click together. Nobody joins in the applause. Primrose stares vacantly at the line of families, where her mother must be standing with all the others who are secretly exhaling their relief at keeping their own daughters for another year.

"Now for the boy tribute!" Her wig is still askew from Haymitch's attempt at an inebriated embrace and she keeps trying to adjust it with minute little touches. If my heart weren't in my throat it would be almost funny.

She claws a piece of paper from the second glass bowl and unfurls it. Pause. "Peeta Mellark!"

That's me. She said my name.

Around me, the boys recoil slightly like I'm contagious. I breathe. The Peacekeepers always give you a second or two to step forward voluntarily and I manage to wrench my feet from the ground before I give them an excuse to grab me by the arm. They flank me as we move up the center aisle and I don't know how they can march like that and match my stride.

Primrose meets my eyes as I ascend the steps, Effie's animated motions drawing me forward. For a moment she's as unreadable as her sister. The shock has not fully set in yet. Effie spins me around to face the kids we've acquitted for one more year.

The rows of eighteen-year old girls and boys are teary-eyed at being spared one last time. Welcome to the rest of your lives, kids.

Mayor Undersee reads the Treaty of Treason in as droning a voice as he can manage. Sometimes I think he does it on purpose to subvert its message, turning it into the boring lectures we all tune out in class. Whatever effect the speech is supposed to have is lost on me, at least.

I'm aware of how big I am next to Primrose. Her head barely clears my shoulder, and I'm not the tallest boy in my year. My arms are three times again the size of her skinny limbs. Going by their expressions, the adults in the back who are far gone enough in their miseries to place bets on the Games are weighing this already.

Finishing, the mayor turns and gestures for the two of us to shake hands. I take Primrose's hand and hold it as firmly as I dare without crushing it. Her hand is colder than mine, and so small. We look each other in the eyes. I try to smile at her.

The aggressive Panem anthem blares from speakers. Up here on the stage, the brassy march is more abrasive than ever.

A swaying Haymitch totters dangerously close to the edge of the podium. I think I hear Primrose whisper a warning to him before he sashays right off the stage and sprawls before the front lines of kids.

Behold, our mentor. As pupils we may not wield swords with accuracy but we'll be able to drink the other tributes under the table.

The anthem ends. We're paraded into the Justice Building with fanfare on Effie's part and listlessness on the mayor's. Peacekeepers separate us and we're led into different rooms and left there. It's grand. My mother's excessively proud of her velvet hat, the only velvet anybody in our family owns. She wears it on special occasions. Here, velvet drapes the windows and covers the furniture. It's plush, and rich, and I think of the faded cotton-shift couch in my family's living room, and I prefer that infinitely—pink flowers and all.

There's such a thing as putting too much icing on a cake.

One hour is what we get for our farewells. A couple of minutes suffices for my family. My brothers shuffle in, followed by my mom and dad. I love my brothers but whatever Katniss and Primrose have together is some ingredient that's lacking in my family recipe. Dad is the warmest, going so far as to embrace me and whisper some words of encouragement. He does try his best. I smile at him so he'll feel a little better. He still has two good strong boys.

My eyes are stinging. Soon enough I'm crying outright. The show of emotion embarasses Glennan and Pace and their goodbyes are mostly made looking anywhere but at me. Perhaps Pace feels he ought to have made some kind of commotion like Katniss did for Prim but it would have accomplished about as much. Mom puts her hand on my arm. A few moments later and we've run out of things to say. I'm oddly desperate for them to leave.

When I'm alone I'm struck by the sensation. I've rarely been alone. The bakery barely has elbow room and our home upstairs has less. Tonight will be the first time I've slept in a room to myself. For the next few days, at least, I will be experiencing things I never have before. Not to mention the obvious experience of death. Is it so bad that I'm actually looking forward to seeing the Capitol?

I don't expect many other visitors. I'm surprised when some school friends come by; it's something not typically done for the other boys culled in recent years. Usually the poor kid's pulled out by his roots and his friends do their best to forget him. Years later he's barely acknowledged as ever having existed. Maybe the girls are better about that.

I stop trying to hold it together. I'm not going to pretend like I'm some stoic hero. I cry some more.

Madge visits. I have the feeling she goes to see each tribute, every year. We haven't spoken much before, just exchanged pleasantries, but our short conversation here is nice. Even comforting. Frustration underscores her words. She tells me to take care of Primrose. It's the first time anybody's mentioned the twelve-year-old girl that is in the Games too.

Soon I'm alone again, studying the pattern on the wallpaper. It clashes with the velvet drapes. Suddenly mundane details are occupying my mind, crowding everything else out. At least, that's the only explanation I have for my abrupt fascination with interior decorating.

I'm doing well. Under control. My eyes burn and the skin beneath them is red and blotchy, I'm sure.

I don't hear the door until it clicks shut. Instead of another friend to mutter brief but touching condolences, I turn to see Katniss Everdeen.

Never before have I been sorry to see her, but I'm sure sorry now. Once, when I was too small for this to be held against me—before the reality of the Games sank in—I entertained a fantasy where my name was called for the reaping. In that daydream, Katniss tearfully came to bid me farewell and confessed a secret crush on me she'd harbored as long as I had. At the time, 'crush' was like the penultimate term of affection for six-year-olds. Of course, I emerged from that fantasy the Victor and Katniss was waiting for me when I got home.

Also of course, that daydream did not include competing against Katniss's little sister for survival.

This does not appear to be a reenactment of my childhood fancy. Katniss does not look about ready to confess her undying crush for me. She looks ready to short Primrose's competition by one.

"Um," I spread my hands, a placating gesture which has worked very well for me before. That's as far as I get.

With unbelievable speed she darts forward and has my collar in an iron grip. I'm not positive she wasn't aiming for my throat.

I know she's a hunter but until now I haven't really appreciated the deadliness that goes right along with that. Oh she's fast. She has been crying. Her eyes are red-rimmed and hateful. She holds me there a second, eyes burning, and I don't know what to say. What can I possibly tell her?

Words never fail me for long and I'm about to open my mouth, possibly just to put my foot in it, when she beats me to it.

"Don't you come back," she breathes. "Don't you dare. If you come back alive, I will kill you."

I believe her.

"I mean it."

"I know you do."

"If you—"

"I said I get it," I snap. Already this is upsetting me more than anything else has. So much for a tearful confession from her. "I'm not the one you need to threaten. I'm just the only you you can." Already I can picture the Career tributes' gleeful reactions upon seeing one of their competitors was a bitty twelve-year-old girl from the coal district. "'Come back in a box or don't come back at all.' Gotcha."

Katniss releases my collar, studying my face. If she detects any falsehood I've got no doubt she'll clock me. I can't help but feel bitter. Like she thinks I asked for this. Like she thinks I even had a snowball's chance in hell at winning anyway. Does she think I'm crying for joy?

Possibly realizing this, she takes a step back.

"I mean, what am I going to do, bake the Careers?" I mutter.

She's visibly startled. Why? Am I not even granted the right to be sarcastic about my death? Out of spite—more against the whole damned mess than her specifically—I add, "What do you think the chances are that the Cornucopia's going to offer a rolling pin?"

Silence. After years of planning what I would say to her once the opportunity finally arose, this is kind of going in the opposite direction. Let me start over. Hello Katniss, my name is Peeta Mellark and I've been in love with you for like, ever.

Just like that, I'm deflated. "I'll do what I can." It's all I can promise. Suddenly I just want her to go. Pining after her when she didn't recognize my existence was better than this. This is what the Capitol does. They yank what little hopes you have, the few dreams you allow yourself, and they make them fight to the death in front of a live studio audience. Plus the rest of the nation.

Imagine if Katniss was the Everdeen whose name had been pulled. Imagine if it was her in Primrose's place. What wouldn't Katniss do to get back home to her mom and sister? Why don't my brothers, my parents, deserve the same effort from me?

Because they don't. Katniss has seen my mom. She knows what sort of people the Mellarks are. We're not the worst. We're also not Everdeens. She has more right to Primrose than my family does to me.

Tears blur my vision again and I don't care that she sees.

Her expression is unfathomable. A Peacekeeper chooses that moment to open the door. My hour's up. I can hear faint snatches of conversation in the hallway beyond. A distant tattoo of heels suggests Effie Trinket is not far away.

The man in the white uniform comes forward and takes her arm. She shakes off his hand and turns toward the door. Just before she disappears from my life she turns and says, "Thank you for the bread. Back then."

I stare at her. She's sincere. I swallow. There's a lump in my throat. "You're welcome."

It's not the way she wanted to say it, I can tell. It's not the way I wanted her to say it, and I hadn't wanted her to say it at all.

And that's it. She's whisked away. Again I'm alone, and I sit down and cry, because I'm going to die. In a few days my life will end and everything I've tried to make of it will come to a whole lot of nothing.

Cameras flock to us as we're led onto the train. I don't make any effort to hide that I've been crying. Why should I? I'm not going to celebrate like one of the Careers. Let the Capitol see just how excited the rest of us get for this nightmare.

Primrose has been tearful, too, and the watery smile she gives me is radiant enough to break a heart. We're shooed onto the train, a luxury machine unlike any of the coal lines that threads the districts. Immediately we're taken aback by the finery but there's no time to gawk; flitting assistants prod and herd us to our respective compartments.

After so long of sharing my room with my brothers, it almost seems wrong to have a beautiful place like this to myself. Tributes, though, are owed all this and more. Maybe this all started when some highbody from the Capitol heard a poor districter say, "I'd kill for a hot meal," and took them at their word.

In fact the first thing I do is take a hot shower, the first time I haven't had to wait until our boiler heated up the water. It's tempting to stay and wallow in the steam. I don't.

They've laid out clothing for me in the dressers. Even though it's a charcoal color, the red piping and quality of the fabric instantly sets it apart from the dusty colors of District 12. I'm hesitant to toss away my old clothes. My trousers are nicer than anything a kid from the Seam would own but they've been patched up several times over the years. The shirt is almost new, only a year old. Then I shrug. No point in holding on.

Food weighs down the tables in the dining car, there's so much of it. I have never seen so much food before, not even in the bakery cases. Kids press their noses to the glass of my family's bakery to gape at the enormous cakes we display there, unaware they're just so much icing on cardboard. We can't afford to waste good grain on a cake nobody's going to eat.

They. _They_ can't afford that. I sit down at about the same time that Primrose comes in and we begin attacking the food with gusto.

When Haymitch Abernathy stumbles into the cabin and sees me, he takes an immediate swallow from his flask. When he sees Prim, he downs the flask entirely. I remember he mentored the last twelve-year-old that was reaped. She died early at least, in the Cornucopia, and didn't have to endure the frozen hell that awaited the tributes later on.

He leaves the car. Primrose looks worried, like she's done something to upset him. I'm going to have a talk with Haymitch. Then I hear him retch in the hallway. I'm going to have a talk with Haymitch _later_.

"Our mentor is mental," I whisper to Primrose. She giggles.

We eat for a few minutes. Effie Trinket has joined us and she's praising our table manners in a way that insults them. So Primrose and I sit with abnormally good posture and handle our forks properly, but we still manage to shovel down a lot of food regardless. Poor kid has never had enough to eat. I've always had almost enough to eat and all of that 'enough' was stale and uninviting. The only food we ever had fresh was the game Katniss or Gale Hawthorne traded at the bakery for bread that was always fresher than Dad insisted to Mom it was.

Effie goes on about all of the wonders we'll see in the Capitol. Despite—well, everything, I'm insanely curious.

When she finally leaves, murmuring something about checking the status of some new trend she'd been hoping to start, Primrose and I are alone. I see that she's wearing a pin that glints in the sun streaming through the train window. I'd hardly noticed when the train had begun to move.

"Is that a mockingjay?" I ask, motioning to it.

Her head snaps down automatically to look at it. "Yes," she says shyly. "Madge Undersee gave it to me. Did she come to see you too?"

I wonder if she knows about Madge's aunt. I don't think it's common knowledge in the Seam. "She did."

"Did she give you a pin too?"

"No. She must think you're more stylish."

This gets a little grin from Primrose. "More than a boy."

"You don't think I can pull off pigtails?" I pose my head in profile. She giggles again.

Later on we watch the recap of the day's reapings. Haymitch joins us, falling heavily down into a thick chair. Effie is disapproving. The recap proceeds numerically, beginning with District 1 and ending with ours. Like always, the kid reaped from District 2 struts from a crowd of disappointed faces and takes their place on the stage like they're a Victor already. If volunteers were allowed, District 2 would be battling over who got the glory. The camera briefly lingers on a big blonde boy who is severely disappointed that he isn't called. The boy everybody's envying is just as big.

I shake my head.

Most of the kids called are older and often look like they'd taken out extra slips in exchange for tesserae. Ironically, neither Primrose nor I had done so, although I suspect that Katniss and many of the Seam kids had. When they get to District 11 the lucky boy is a big, strong-looking guy who takes the stage without any show of emotion, but holds his head high. They call out "Rue Garlander" for the girl and we see a tiny, birdlike girl led up to the podium. She can't be more than twelve. Primrose makes a sad noise. They're the only two twelve-year-olds reaped this year, although they culled a thirteen-year-old boy from District 3 that appears about ten.

I study the faces, particularly the Careers, the same way I imagine they'll shortly be studying mine.

District 12 comes on. Our grimy little community looks littler and grimier on camera. No matter how good kids in town have it, next to districts like 2 we might as well all be pathetic.

Primrose buries her face as the camera shows Effie calling her name and won't watch herself on screen being marched up to the stage. Then she peeks through her fingers at Katniss, who is screaming and fighting for all she's worth to prevent what she can't. It's like reliving it. I'm back there, and Effie hasn't called my name yet.

Effie calls my name.

The camera shows a fair-haired boy of middling height and stocky build who walks up to the stage more steadily than I'm sure I felt. Now I vaguely hear the commentators, who I've been tuning out this far, make some speculation. "He seems like a strong one," says one woman with enormous false lashes and flashing tattoos. "Looks like he might give District 12 a good show this year!"

They'd said no such thing about Primrose. I can only imagine what Katniss is thinking now.

Primrose is looking at me with such an odd expression. "What?" I ask, off guard.

"Maybe you could," she says. Her voice isn't much louder than a whisper. "Win, I mean."

I'm completely taken aback. Haymitch regards her before he takes a long dragging drink from his flask.

Win? No, I'm not going to win. And her saying so only implies what she thinks of her own chances. I force a smile. "I'll give them a good show, at any rate."

"That you will!" pipes Effie, too brightly. Haymitch lurches up and away, saying something about a nap.

**Two days later**

Sounds of hushed snickers break through my thoughts. I snap to attention and turn around. Primrose and Rue are huddled together. They glance over their shoulders at me and break out into fresh giggles. Possibly because I dropped a sandbag on my foot just now. I throw up my hands in mock exasperation, which pleases them, but really I'm enjoying this.

As we did the day before, we split up into stations. I'm doing my best to hit them all, though it's tempting just to hang out at the camoflauge booth. Primrose and Rue dart over to a man who shows them how to rig a snare that catches someone by the foot and sends them into the air. Before long, Rue is showing them both the best way to tie yourself to a tree so you don't fall.

Haymitch's opinion is that Prim ought to concentrate on stations that focus on self-preservation and defense. I agree; a couple days of training won't do her much good against kids twice her size with five times her knowledge of weapons. She and Rue spent a lot of time with the healer's station yesterday; Prim has a knack for it. Probably passed down from her mother.

Now that Haymitch and I have a plan of action, he's been remarkably helpful. Sometimes I think he's even sober.

"Did they reap you just to babysit?" scoffs a voice from behind my shoulder.

I turn around to see Glimmer standing with her hip out and head cocked, looking disdainful. She's one of the Careers. Her extraordinary beauty is marred, somehow, by the brutality she paints her face with like makeup.

"They call me the Pacifier," I say lightly. Glimmer rolls her eyes. Spying the station where an assortment of wicked-looking knives are displayed like so many serrated teeth, I head in that direction. Honestly, I'd like to spend my time with the healer too, but I'm too far behind the Careers in weapons training. I'm okay with knives. There's even one that looks like the old thing I used to cut stale bread with.

Glimmer follows me. Having her behind me sends my back to prickling. The Careers don't even make any pretense of surreptitiously watching the other tributes train; they stare at you outright and that's what Glimmer does as I pick up a knife and study it. It's not like when the town girls come to the bakery to see the Mellark boys work and make a lot of puns that I only recently began to understand.

Don't show off, but get their interest. Words of wisdom from Haymitch. I take a stance and lodge a blade pretty well into the chest of a target not far away. It's actually kind of a better shot than I can usually make. Whoops. Glimmer coolly picks up her own blade and sends it thudding pretty close to mine.

"Nice shot, but I think I got the heart," I tell her seriously. "That's what all the girls tell me, anyway."

She snorts a laugh and fails to inject it with her typical derision. Enough of knives, I think. It's not so much the rounds of stations I'm making as the selective rounds of Careers. Already I've lifted weights with Scalon, the brute from District 2; learned some hand-to-hand alongside the girl from 4, and exchanged verbal barbs with Clove. Each time I'm careful to mask my level of expertise—or inexpertise, as the case may be—in whatever they see me do. It's not a lot I have to mask. Actually the only station where I'm exactly as proficient as I pretend to be is the camoflauge booth.

Lunchtime. Unlike breakfast and dinner, lunch is a meal we eat with the other tributes. Tables are scattered around and kids group around them or don't. Primrose and Rue immediately pick a table together and begin chattering. Other kids eyeball each other from their tables. It's like a scene from school.

I know I should probably sit with the Careers but I would only lose my appetite around them. Smalltalk with them is a little gorier than the gossipy stuff I'm used to at the bakery. I find myself sharing a table with Thresh, the boy from District 11. Neither of us talks, which suits us fine. I'm surprised to see Haymitch and the 11 mentors chatting amiably during the rare times everyone's together. The familiarity transfuses to us and a little of the tension we feel around the other tributes fades.

Occasionally, during training, I see Thresh glancing over Rue's way. Especially whenever a Career is close by. Both he and I are in the same position but his vigilance is more discreet. I guess he can only watch over her from afar.

"Why do you talk to them?" he asks. I think it's the first time I've heard him talk. His voice is a low rumble. Next to him adult men sound like they're going through puberty.

"Who?" I'm almost ridiculously concerned with keeping my voice to a manly low too.

"The Careers."

"Oh, them." I think. "The sparkling conversation. Why don't you?"

They try to ham him, I know. I've seen it. He has none of it.

Thresh exhales sharply through his nose. "I don't think much of them."

Another thing we have in common. "Well, I'm not having lunch with them. I might lose it."

The corners of his mouth twitch slightly, but he recovers quickly from his bout of hilarity and looks serious. "Teaming up with them is not a wise strategy," he says.

No, it's not a _winning_ strategy, I almost tell him. Instead I pick at my food and say, "Maybe. I'm not you. You don't need them."

Whether this flatters him or not I can't tell. I'm a little surprised he brought it up. Is he trying to warn me? He's obviously not interested in alliances, possibly because he'd feel dishonored having to break it in the end. Nothing he's done so far has been engineered to impress anybody. I admire him for that. All this nonsensical positioning must seem so stupid to him.

We finish eating in silence. Primrose and Rue don't. I'm a little amazed at their capacity to shut out the horror of this by crowding so close together nothing else gets through. By the stricken look on one of the District 11 mentor's faces, I can tell this doesn't happen often and it's heartrending when it does. No wonder Haymitch is a sodden mess so much of the time.

He approaches me the next evening, before the interviews. The previous day, we performed in front of the judges for our training scores. I scraped an 8, lucky considering how much more attention they were paying to their drinking song than me. Prim only got a 4.

Haymitch and I have spoken about how I should approach the conversation with Flickerman but he's spent more time with Prim, going over how she ought to act. Haymitch tries, really, but it's Cinna that she responds to best, with his gentle manner and quiet smile.

"Just pretend like you're talking to me," he says, smoothing over a detail in her costume. "I'll be there. Whatever he asks, you answer like we're having a conversation together."

Primrose nods. Cinna and the stylists hover over her protectively, which anybody who knows Prim tends to do. Her costume is pretty and doesn't overwhelm her. She's blessedly devoid of makeup. Sometimes stylists from other districts slather even twelve-year-olds in heavy, mature makeup and the result is always galling. Prim's light hair is woven into braids that are roped around her head, and she's wearing a black dress with some colorful sparkling that puts you in mind of a small flame ready to flare.

"Cinna's little cinder," he tells her affectionately, and she smiles and kisses him on the nose. A wave of desperation floods my stomach but I keep a smooth face as Portia fusses over some details in my own outfit. It's these stylists' first time dressing tributes, and I'm tempted to warn them against getting attached to their charges. It will only make the next time harder.

Some of the elements in my costume are similar to Prim's, keeping up the united appearance Cinna and Haymitch have been striving for, but the effects are different. On Prim they appear bright, and fresh, and real. Me, they make into something commanding and impressive and even deadly. I don't know what nuances of touch he used but the guy is good at his job.

During the opening ceremony, where the tributes are paraded in chariots before the screaming crowd, Cinna got us up in outfits that burst into an artificial flame that was so realistic both Prim and I weren't sure how we'd make it to the front without all our hair burning off. The effect, we've been told, was phenomenal. So was the effect of my small gesture, of placing my hand on Prim's shoulder. The Capitol has no idea that Prim had been shaking so badly during the chariot ride I'd been afraid she would fall off, and had put out my hand to steady her.

Haymitch and I stand quietly before we're due to make our appearance before the audience. "Step lightly," he says. I know what he means. But I'm not worried about this. Swords and cudgels and killing, that's all foreign to me. Words, I know what to do with those.

We step onto the elevator and see all of the tributes being arranged in order of District. It's almost instinctual to want to cover up Prim's eyes at the sight of Glimmer in a gown leaving zero room for the imagination. Glimmer catches my eye and winks, and I flush despite myself. Prim shakes her head, like a disapproving little sister might.

Lights, camera, action.

We step out onto the stage to enthusiastic applause. It's hard to see the crowd through the bright lights, but the roar is thunderous. By the looks of it, many of the audience have already picked out their favorites. I hear Glimmer's name called, and Scalon pumps his fist to cheers, and once or twice I even hear my name shouted out.

The effect is weird. Sometimes I think they treat the tributes this way to trick them into compliance, to get them so swept up in the costumes and glamor and adulation that they forget what's really happening. A distraction. It is all a distraction. Aware as I am of the noxious effect it has, it's still hard not to really feel like you're special, and to remember you're just some kid with lousy luck from a poor district with lousy luck to spare.

And the most surreal thing is realizing that every single person in the nation is watching you. Right. Now. Live. My parents see me. My brothers see me. Katniss sees me, although I'm sure she only has eyes for her sister. All the kids from school are watching me right this second. Maybe they're thinking: I knew him, and in a couple days I'll have never known him. I remember being in their places the past sixteen years, thinking how weak the tribute from District 12 looked, how unimpressive. Usually they're still half-starved. Is that how they see me now?

We take our places. Everything is laid out according to prominence, and the stylists take the coveted first row. Cinna and Portia give us optimistic smiles, but I don't need it. The people of District 12 are watching me now, and there's not a person from District 12 I can't talk to.

Caesar Flickerman emerges with funny theatrics. His hair is an electric blue, which oddly suits him. Like how Cinna's quiet nature lends dignity to the few touches of Capitol fashion that you can see, Caesar has a presence that overwhelms his crazy appearance until it seems like the hair, the teeth, the skin, are only accessories to his personality.

After some enthusiastic greetings Caesar gets down to business. One by one, we rise and take our places on a chair beside him. Glimmer's first, which I suppose she's used to. Her interview just confirms the seductive impression her dress makes, and when the three minutes are up she sashays back to her place with no embarrassment and Marvel's staring so bad somebody's got to poke him to get him moving. Prim stifles a smile.

Well, I can already think of Glimmer's strategy and I won't be surprised if she uses it during the Games.

2, 3, 4. Scalon makes an attractively harsh impression. The kid from 3 is clearly nervous, but Caesar guides him through the interview like a pro. Capitol phony or not, I decide to like him, because the interest he takes in each kid seems genuine and he really tries to make them appealing to sponsors no matter how badly they stack up against tributes like Clove or Scalon.

Everybody's got an approach: bloodthirsty, sly, fearless. Little Rue floats up to Caesar and I think of her mother, looking at her baby dressed up the way she'd always seen her, like a princess. I realize I hate when little kids get hurt. I guess that's kind of a given; who likes hurting kids? But the vehemence of this realization hits me like a sledgehammer and for a minute I can't separate her and Prim.

Rue's interview is sweet, and Caesar presents her wonderfully. She received a 7 for her score, impressive for a little thing, and they dwell on this a moment before Rue says, "I'm very hard to catch. And if they can't catch me, they can't kill me. So don't count me out."

It is not something a twelve-year-old should ever have to say. The sheer absurdity of this almost overwhelms me. The audience coos at her, but they play at real emotion like a baby might at a game.

Thresh's turn is next, and while he speaks brusquely cutting his answers to 'yes' and 'no,' his effect is so arresting and I can almost hear the money exchanging hands. As in all other things, he doesn't play to the crowd and they seem to love him for it. That's interesting, that they love a little rebellion.

Prim's up. Her name is called. Just before she gets to her feet, she looks at me. For encouragement, I guess. I lean down and say quietly, "Talk to Katniss."

She brightens. She adores Cinna but there's nobody in the world dearer to her than her sister, and Cinna's heart is too good and sets too easy a standard; if Primrose can melt a heart like Katniss's, then nobody can resist her.

Prim gets up and goes over to Caesar. I see the other tributes are looking at me strangely. They don't matter.

"What did he tell you?" Caesar asks her teasingly, after they sit.

"A secret," she replies promptly, and I don't even hide my laugh. That is _exactly_ what she would say if Katniss demanded to know what I'd said.

"Oh?" Caesar gives a playful smile. "Are you good at keeping secrets?"

"No," Prim says honestly. The audience chuckles. She does brilliantly in the interview. If the training scores took likability into account, Prim's would be off the charts, because this is exactly what she's best at. By the end of the three minutes, I can't tell the crowd doesn't want her to leave. In one hundred and eighty seconds, she's become a little sister to all of them.

She walks back and Rue gives her a bright smile, which I hope the camera doesn't miss.

Then my name is called and I stand. As I walk away, Rue and Prim call in unison: "Do good, Peeta!"

I almost trip, I'm so shocked. Nothing like that's ever happened during the interviews.

Astonishment is registering in Caesar's eyes, but he's been doing this for forty years and nothing fazes him. "You seem to have a small club of admirers," he comments to me as we sit.

"They're my littlest fans," I say.

Caesar laughs richly with the crowd. "And who's your biggest?" he asks.

I grin. "Me. I'd say the pigs I feed, but I outweigh them all."

Another laugh, bigger this time. I'm getting comfortable again. "So you keep pigs?" Flickerman asks.

"No, I keep bread. I try to keep the pigs too, but my neighbor always wants them back."

I'm referring to the Farlays, whose animals I've been looking after ever since Jon Farlay hurt his back. The crowd doesn't know this, but they're laughing uproariously. I'm grinning, and it's real. I can't help it. I like making people laugh.

For a moment we talk about the bakery and I start in on comparing each tribute against their districts' breads. This, too, is unprecedented, because tributes never refer to each other in the interviews, you see, and certainly not by name. "You see Glimmer over there," and I point at her.

"How can I not?" says Caesar, and we're both guffawing.

"Well, the bread from her district are usually hard rolls. So anytime you talk about District 1, you can say they have tight buns." Now the crowd's rolling in the aisles, holding their sides. It's been a while since a tribute's played to them like this. The reapings are based on chance, and you can never take the chance that someone will have a sense of humor.

Glimmer preens under the extra attention. I make a few other examples. Then I mention the Capitol showers, and how you have to be careful what you end up smelling like when you select the fragrance.

"The first day I picked vanilla in the morning, and cinnamon at night. I started to smell like one of the bakery cakes, and when I wasn't paying attention I almost started chewing on my fingers!" I say. The house can't catch their breath for howling, and I'm smiling like an idiot. I take stock of the time and am surprised to find I've only used up about two minutes. One to go.

Caesar's wiping his eyes. "You're a de_light_, Peeta. Is there some lucky girlfriend you've got back home?"

This is exactly the direction I'd hoped he'd go in. I pause, and it's not entirely for effect. I shake my head no.

Caesar is not convinced. "Liar. Handsome, funny lad like you. There must be some special girl. Come on, what's her name?"

I sigh. Remember that the entire damn country is watching what I say. That adds a realistic touch to my hesitation. "Well—there's this one girl. I've had a crush-" _that_ word, that six-year-old's pinnacle of affection, but I couldn't bring myself to say "love," not here where it means so little- "on her ever since I can remember. But I'm pretty sure she didn't know I was alive until the reaping."

Unrequited love is universal, I suppose. Everyone makes noises at that. Sighs, 'aww's, wistful sounds. Caesar asks me if she's got a guy already, and I honestly respond that I don't know, but that she's somebody who makes a lasting impression and I'm sure the boys are crazy about her.

"So here's what you do. You win, you go home. She can't turn you down then, eh?" says Caesar. I want to snort, because it's my six-year-old daydream all over again. I'm not six years old anymore and I don't think Katniss would ever go out with somebody because they wowed her.

All that I shove out of my mind. Katniss is watching me right now. "I don't think it will work out," I say slowly. "Winning...won't help in my case."

Baffled, Caesar sits back. He's so good I can't even tell whether he's faking his bewilderment. "Why on earth not?"

My face is red, I can feel it. I had wanted to go for a mournful expression but that's not happening. "Because...her sister is here with me."

Silence. The audience, who I'd had in stitches seconds ago, is quiet as they absorb this. Once they do, small sounds of sympathy emerge from some place I can't discern through the bright glare of the lights. It's accompanied by a rising noise. I want to believe that it's real, that their empathy derives from the part of them that's still human, untouched by paint and surgery and isolation.

I can hardly imagine what Katniss is thinking. She's probably watching this with her mother and the Hawthornes, and I can picture her grey eyes wide with surprise. Prim is sitting behind me and I know her mouth must be hanging open.

"That is a predicament," Caesar says quietly. This time I'm sure the emotion in his voice is genuine.

I want to tell him that it's not really a predicament. That I already know what I'm going to do. But it's too early.

Still, I mostly wish I could speak to Katniss right now. Tell her, privately, that I'm going to turn this impossibility into a choice. That I'm going to die, and that's _my_ decision.

…...

**the next morning**

**60... 59... 58... 57...**

...

****n: first try at the Hunger Games. If you have any thoughts I'd love to hear them.


	2. Chapter 2

**56... 55... 54... 53...**

If you wanted to commit suicide, this would be the time to do it. The pedestals have a weight trigger that will explode anyone who steps off before the countdown finishes. I've watched it happen once. The announcers passed it off like she'd moved too quickly out of nerves, but anybody really looking at her face—and they showed that replay too often—would know otherwise.

I don't step off.

**42... 41... 40... 39...**

For these Games the expanse we're in looks weirdly normal, no frigid wasteland or deadly paradise. Like some of the forbidden land that stretches out beyond the fences of District 12, only flatter. Maybe they just want an old-fashioned slugfest. I wish I could take the time to appreciate being out in the open, the way I'd always dreamed.

**27... 26... 25... 24...**

Prim stands a couple of pedestals to my side. She's shaking like a little leaf. Yesterday's pleasure from the interviews has gone away, replaced by stark fear. I catch her eye and we both shake our heads at each other.

**21... 20... 19... 18...**

"Get the hell out," intones Haymitch's voice in my head again. "The Cornucopia's a bloodbath you can't handle. Find shelter and water. Water first."

I don't see any rolling pins scattered among the supplies littering the mouth of the Cornucopia. Too bad I didn't have more time to spare at the edible plants station. Rue and Prim will probably team up; with Rue's knowledge they should be fine scavenging.

**12... 11.. 10... 9...**

It is so tempting to just run for the nearest backpack. It's bulging with supplies. Weapons glitter in the Cornucopia's mouth. The best of them, swords and maces and wicked knives, are neatly displayed on a wall in the mouth's interior. Like the most tantalizing prizes at a festival game, and the hardest to win.

**8... 7... 6... 5...**

I brace myself. Out of the corner of my eye, Prim stands with arms limply at her sides, tiny fists balled and trembling. Rue's on her toes and looks like she's ready to fly.

**4... 3... 2...**

I want to die as myself, but I don't know if I'll get that chance. What they're going to see on their television screens won't be me. But I know what I am. I know that, at least.

**1...**

A gong blasts the air, and everyone bolts from their pedestals. Without hesitation Prim and Rue turn on their heels and dart for the trees, drawing together right away even though their spots were well apart, and it's the last I see of them before they hit the treeline.

I'm running, fists pumping—_toward_ the Cornucopia. Haymitch will be furious. I'd nodded my head when he gave us the instruction to get the hell away like I'd fully planned on it.

I ignore the first line of gear, aiming for better treasure piled closer to the mouth. I don't really want it. What I want, what I need right now, is to make a point.

There's an awful quiet initially, then the air is ripped with screams. Bright red blood spatters in the corner of my eye and I don't turn to see who it is. I spy a likely looking pack and run that way. Before I reach it, a tribute reaches me. It's the boy from 7, and he's already got a spear in his hand and looks like he knows what to do with it.

He launches the thing at me and I trip to avoid the spearpoint that slices the air above me. It sails over my head and hits the ground too far away to be retrieved. The boy isn't done, though, he's got knives aplenty too. The pack closest to him must have been loaded. He slashes at my head, but I'm faster and grab his wrist before he can bring the knife back around. Taking some cues from my years of wrestling, I snap his wrist with a hard twist and the knife falls to the ground. Another's in his other hand and flashes at my throat. I block with my forearm and an rewarded with a long gash down the side.

I hiss in pain. It's not the first injury I've received at the hands of another person, but it's definitely the worst and first blood in the Games takes your breath away. He lunges and knocks us both to the ground, me on my back. It knocks the wind out of me. My fingers scrabble for anything to grab onto and find a fist-sized rock, not big enough to brain him with. Before he can draw his blade again, I slam the rock into the side of his head. I've pushed him back far enough to get my feet under his chest and shove with all my strength. He flies backwards.

He's out of breath and his head is bleeding. Before either of us can make a move, his chest explodes in red and when I blink there's a knife sticking out of it. I stare for a second. It's the first person I've ever seen die. In real life, I mean. No fanfare, he just sags and he's gone. The boy from District 8, a lumbering guy, lurches up and he's going to retrieve the knife he buried in the boy's chest, and suddenly I don't think he's about to make friends with me. I think he just took advantage of the kid's distraction to take him out, and I'm next.

Before he can get to it I tackle him the same way that the boy from 7 did me, but I don't let him get his feet beneath my chest. I grab for the knife still embedded in the District 7 boy's chest but the kid from 8 is broad and strong, almost as strong as me and several inches taller, and he picked up a few tips in training. He fist connects squarely with my jaw. I stumble back, hand to my face, and he wastes no time coming after.

Now I've got my feet, and hand-to-hand was the thing that came most easily to me in training, apart from camouflage. Boxing I took to naturally. I've got my fists just like the instructor said and when 8 leaps for me I give him a nasty right hook that snaps his head to the side. He's dazed but not long enough for me to take advantage. He swings and I duck. He jabs a ham-sized fist and my left arm blocks it instinctively. It's the arm that the knife grazed and it's dizzyingly painful. I miss a step but my mind is strangely focused.

He barrels forward and I dodge, slamming a clenched hand on his back. He wheezes and falls.

I have an opportunity. I hesitate. He shakes off the cobwebs and makes another try, unsteadily because he's seeing stars. This time I put all my power into the punch and he goes down like a sack of flour.

My tunnel vision clears and I become aware of my surroundings. The fight I'd had went by in a flash but so did everybody else's. The action around the Cornucopia has mostly abated. Careers are looting the goods around the mouth. Scalon's holding an evil-looking blade in his hands triumphantly. Bodies litter the ground, I count about a dozen but don't care to know exactly how many.

I'm breathing hard, as much from the shock of the moment as from the exertion. One of the Careers lopes up to me. Clove. I tense but she doesn't seem about to attack.

"That was pretty good," she says, like she's commenting on a cake I'd baked. "Oh, but you forgot to finish him."

She does it for me. The District 8 boy's body jerks as she drives the knife down. So does mine. At least he's unconscious for it. A cannon booms.

I have to sound tough. "Thanks for the rescue."

Clove rolls her eyes, then gives me a speculative once-over. "Come on," she says decisively, and begins trotting back to where the other Careers are busy pawing through their winnings, although I can tell they were watching my fight too.

This is what I want. Only I don't want it. I make myself follow her, wondering what Haymitch is thinking now. I hadn't said anything about joining up with the Careers. What District 12 must be thinking now. No tribute from either the Seam or the town has ever stooped so low as to join their alliance. I shove it from my mind. Priorities.

Scalon looks over as I jog up, and mercifully does not try out his new toy on me. I see there's one less Career than usual. Blurrily I recall noticing Thresh and the District 4 boy battling it out and Thresh must have gotten the better of him. I guess I'm the replacement Career.

Nobody says anything as I stoop to pick up a knife and a pack of my own. I am in the club. Joy. Thankfully Rue and Prim are probably far gone by now, up safe in the trees.

Glimmer tosses me something. A bandage. I fish out a bottle of disinfectant from a bag and douse the cut on my arm. Ow. It's deeper than I thought. Clumsily, I wrap the cloth around it one-handed. Marvel is disgruntled. It's been a while since there was a tribute in the Career alliance that was from one of the latter districts.

Finally Scalon swings his pack onto his shoulder and says, "Come on."

I'm astounded to see the little sprat from District 3 is still alive. He hops around the packs like a bird, picking things here and there that are nonsensical to me: some wire, some bolts, tools. He's too scrawny to have earned a place among the Careers but he has to have some knowledge they have use for. For now.

He obediently gathers his odds-and-ends at Scalon's command and bounds after the Careers that are starting to move. I follow, trying to appear enthusiastic. I bet the commentators are going ape. My face is carefully blank. I'm loaded down with supplies, far more than I ever expected. Too much to move easily. The Careers don't seem bothered by the bulk, but I'm wondering how they expect to fight with all that.

They're not expecting to fight with it at all, I soon discover. We happen upon a water source fairly quickly by going out a distance and then circling around, keeping equidistant from the Cornucopia. The District 3 boy is good at math and proves an apt navigator, notwithstanding his obvious unfamiliarity with nature.

A stretch of ground flanks the lake and we set up camp. The Careers begin piling everything together. If it were me I'd space it all out, but they move with a purpose and soon what they're doing makes sense. The boy from District 3, quick to prove his usefulness, immediately begins to configure a complicated network of wiring and metal.

A trap. The Careers aren't always as thick in the head as they are in the neck.

Glimmer stretches and winks at me. "There's time to kill, Loverboy," she suggests sweetly.

Marvel, who's stringing out a net, looks more peevish than ever. Exasperation almost makes me throw up my hands. We're in the middle of a wilderness, for God's sake, and still we can't escape the teenage pettiness that dogs us from home.

I make a comment that sets her and Clove laughing. I can't come across too funny, or it will make me seem weak, but I have to remain likable enough that they'll remember to focus on the other tributes first.

Grumpy, Marvel mutters, "After all that talk I figured you'd team up with your girlfriend's sister."

No one else says anything, but they're waiting for my answer. I shrug and say, "She's a nice kid but what does that matter out here?"

I feel sick saying it. Katniss must feel sick hearing it. I go on to nail the lid. "I won't let her hold me back."

In District 12, nobody speaks. Perhaps we almost never win the Hunger Games, but our tributes never turn on each other, even when they survive long enough that it's possible to.

District 2 doesn't have such hangups. Sometimes the last two standing are both tributes from the first or second district. Regardless of alliances, they always know they'll eventually have to turn on each other. Scalon and Clove go on as though what I've said makes perfect sense.

Night falls and we go on the hunt, after the Capitol runs a tally of the dead in the skies. No Prim, no Rue. Since we had plenty of time to gather supplies, we have flashlight and torches and batteries to spare. Bruises are starting to make my face a sore mess. Glimmer and Lanka, the girl from District 4, are weirdly appreciative of them. Those Districts are so messed up.

Far away, a the spark of a fire catches our notice collectively. How stupid. I hope desperately it's not Prim or Rue, and I crash through the brush alongside the Careers as they careen for the light. She's still asleep when we come running up to her. The girl from District 8. She has no backpack, very little at all, and must have made the fire out of desperation and dozed off.

In less than a second she's fully alert, and pleading. "No, no, please," she says. "Oh no, please—"

Scalon swings his horrible blade and cuts her chest open. She screams but not for long. I'm so glad it's dark, because my eyes are wet. If she'd pled like that to me, I'd never have been able to do a thing. The other Careers laugh and slap Scalon on the back, applauding his daring. Way to go. You got that girl. Way to overcome that helpless kid.

"Twelve down, eleven to go!" crows Marvel. I refrain from stabbing him.

They're in a good mood but complain about how little she's got they can steal, which seems more like taking trophies than anything because they've got such a hoard back at the lake. What else could they possibly need?

We finish and go so the unseen hovercraft can pick up the body. I don't know what everyone's waiting for when we stop after a minute, but then I realize the cannon hasn't gone off.

"Shouldn't we have heard a cannon by now?" Marvel wonders aloud.

Glimmer tosses her hair. Even in the low light, it shines. "Yes. Nothing's keeping them from getting the body."

Unless she's not dead, I think. "Unless she's not dead," Clove says.

They bicker for a moment. The girls want to go back and finish her, Marvel doesn't care, and Scalon's defensive about how good he is at slicing people through the chest. It's getting to me, how they argue about it. So I interrupt with a sharp, "We're wasting time! I'll go finish her and let's move on."

It comes out more harshly than I'd intended. I add with a breath, "_God_," so it seems like I'm just impatient.

They shrug and let me backpedal through the brush. I hear them whisper behind me but I can't make out what they're saying. Not sure I want to.

It's not hard to find the girl again. Scalon's blade has left a bloody trail. She's laid out at the base of the tree. Embers from the fire that killed her still flicker dully. Her form is silhouetted dimly against the light. As I go up to her I can tell that she is, in fact, barely alive. Darkness had prevented Scalon from really determining.

Her eyes are wild, and blue, and swimming with tears. I don't know if the cameras can pierce through the darkness to fully show her. Probably. Her chest moves up and down, raggedly, a gaping maw where the blade had cut her.

I kneel next to her. I want to offer her something, some kind of comfort, but there's nothing. She'll only lay there in agony until she dies, and who knows how long that will be? I draw my knife and slowly place it above her bloody heart.

Her lips move and I hope she's begging me to end it. To make the pain go away. But her eyes say different. She still wants to live. I want to plead with her, don't you know you can't? You're dead. You're just still breathing. My hands tremble as I ready the knife, and I push it down with both hands, feeling wretched. I don't remember why I volunteered for this.

I can't waste time. They can't sense any hesitation from me. So I traipse back casually and reach them just as the cannon goes off.

"Was she dead?" Glimmer raises an eyebrow.

"No." Scalon flushes an angry red, and Lanka has a superior smirk. "She is now. Ready?" My voice is calm.

We head off, looking for something to kill. Back in District 12, I know I am reviled.

**Three days later**

Lanka is rooting around for something in the smaller pile of supplies we have set off from the main, booby-trapped group. "What's this?" she asks, unscrewing the lid of a cloudy jar I don't remember seeing before. Smoke wafts out.

I hear that buzz and I'm on my feet, running for my life. Lanka screams. Axel, the boy from District 3, is sprinting just behind me. We don't stop until we dive into the lake, and then we raise our heads above the water to see Lanka writhing on the ground with a small cloud of tracker jackers attacking her still.

"What happened?" Scalon demands as the Careers come sprinting back. Glimmer and Clove stay back but Marvel's enough of an idiot to get close enough for a sting. Unfortunately, he doesn't die. Lanka is swollen and grotesque and she stops jerking.

"She opened a jar," says Axel shakily. "I think it was full of tracker jackers."

Scalon is furious. So is Glimmer. Nobody's sure how someone managed to trap tracker jackers in a jar of smoke and nestle it among our things without anybody noticing. I vaguely remember the redheaded girl from District 5 doing something in training that reminds me of this. I say nothing, but resolve to be watchful.

But our camp, which has seemed so safe up till now, is not so comfortable anymore.

That night somebody sets the field on fire. I wake up to more smoke and think, _more tracker jackers_, but it's a great shifting cloud and I open my eyes to see that fire is ripping through the large tent we shelter under. It's inches away from me and I'm hacking through the smoke. Again, I drop everything and run to the water, where I gasp and duck underwater. My arm is seared with a hell of a burn to rival anything I've gotten from the ovens.

Our belongings in the tent are demolished, but the booby-trapped pile is safe and nobody's seriously injured. Fortunately I have some experience treating my own burns and soon have mine under control. It's painful as hell but it's superficial, and with the help of some salve begins to heal.

Scalon's rage is terrifying, and I stay well back because he's desperate for someone to kill. We collect some supplies from our large pile under Axel's careful direction. He's got the thing rigged up so that one misstep will set everything off. So far, we haven't seen anybody attempt to raid it. But I always have the feeling of being watched, and on some level it's embarrassing to be on this end of sabotage.

At night I wonder about Rue and Prim. I haven't yet seen them in the nightly dispatches, but that doesn't mean they aren't injured. They're smart, and they're tougher than they look. Like Caesar, I won't count them out. I can't afford to. The Careers are frustrated by their inability to track two twelve-year-old girls, which can only mean they aren't looking up.

A small pinging sound alerts me and I look around. Axel's the only one awake. Guard duty. Dawn is creeping up on the arena and the glow suffuses the few clouds. The morning has the sleepy, tranquil feeling I've always loved from my early mornings in the bakery. Ping.

Swiveling my head from my place on the ground, I search the treeline. Nothing. Ping. What's it hitting? Axel is confused, too.

I stand and look in the direction of the sound.

And I watch as a stone bounces off one of the packs stacked in the mountain of supplies. I have just enough of a warning to dart off for a third time when the explosion catches me in the back and throws me off my feet. Sense deserts me for a moment. Nothing registers through my spinning head. Sights and sounds and sensations blur in a motion of color. They settle into vibration, enough for me to stagger to my feet and check for injuries and assess the devastation.

Again, nobody's died, but the damage is a greater blow this time. Our supplies lay blasted to pieces, so much burning canvas and smoking plastic, creating a nasty smell that makes me gag. Eyes watering, I cover my face with a handkerchief I'd filched some time before. The Careers stumble out of their tent clutching their heads in a futile attempt to shut out the ringing.

When his head clears enough, Scalon erupts at Axel with the heat of a volcano.

"What the hell did you do?" he screams. "You stupid little—"

Axel's got his hands up. "I don't know, something set off the sensors, let me rebuild it—"

"There's nothing left to rebuild!" snaps Glimmer. Normally so beautiful, her hair is askew and her eyes are wild.

Axel falters before the enormous Careers who do not appear about to give him another chance. He turns and starts to run. Axel doesn't get a dozen yards before Clove's knife takes him in the back, and he falls bonelessly.

He hadn't seemed like a bad kid.

Our supplies are so much toast. I know better than to make the joke aloud. The redhead? Thresh? Rue or Prim? I have no idea, but I know Rue is a master with a slingshot. This doesn't occur to the Careers. Maybe they weren't watching the other tributes in training as closely as I'd thought.

I can't help but feel proud. Those kids are holding their own.

We're out of supplies, though. Anybody watching might wonder why I stick with the Careers, bereft of the added protection they have to offer. Most of us still have our weapons. Scalon practically cuddles his blade at night and I know it's too much to hope he'll impale himself.

I'm more or less used to hunger, or at least not being totally full, but it's something new to the kids of District 1 and 2. They've always been well fed in preparation for the Games. I bet they're wishing now they'd paid attention to the edible plants station instead of sticking with skills they were already good at. Come to think of it, I'm wishing my own harvesting skills were a little better.

It's tempting to split with them but I still have my plan. Without his anchor of provisions, Scalon's not so confident. Clove is aggravated but in control. Glimmer's furious. I know they're uncertain about how they will gather food now.

At first it's no worry. We are barraged by sponsor gifts. Should I say, the Careers are. None of the numbers on the parachutes say 12 on them, and the others don't hurry to share a lot with me. I don't ask for any. For some reason, if they shared their food with me it would make what I'd have to do later on harder. I get by on berries I know are safe because Clove has been scavenging them too.

A day or two passes. Time goes by. Sometimes it drags, other times the morning turns to dusk so quickly you're not sure where all those hours went. The flow of gifts begins to ebb. They're expensive, after all, and the Careers aren't earning them with bloodshed. We don't hardly see a soul, no matter how long we hunt for them.

We're inept at foraging. The Careers' talents in running down tributes don't extend themselves to edible prey. Scalon's patience becomes thinned by anger and every hour it seems his temper's on a shorter leash. I begin to stay clear of him. Even Clove, who's shown no aversion to the brute up until now, avoids him. Especially at night.

The cannons are silent. Every day Rue and Prim and I survive is a victory in itself, but brings us closer to whatever the Gamemakers have planned to alleviate any boredom from the audience. Muttations are a particularly favorite remedy of theirs. So far the only ones we've seen are the breeds that have integrated themselves into everyday nature: mockingjays and tracker jackers.

We're hungry. We have water, but we need solid food. Without it, we slow and become less aware of our surroundings. How are the other tributes faring? Not just Prim and Rue, but Thresh, too, and that redhaired girl?

One hour, while I sit and contemplate if now is the time to break away from them, a silver parachute drifts lazily from the sky and settles before us. A big shiny 12 emblazons the container.

A gift! My first. I'm surprised, honestly. The 12 indicates it's from my district, and not a sponsor's present. I thought anything District 12 could spare would go to Prim.

Grabbing for the container, I wrench the top open to look inside.

Bread! Oh, beautiful bread.

"What's that?" demands Marvel. I show him, and he immediately holds his hand out for some. Raising my eyebrows, I shake my head to indicate: _fat chance, I get the lion's share of this one._

I'm starving. I'm about to tear into the loaf of bread with my teeth. Then I stop. I don't know what sets off the alarm in my head, whether it's the color or the smell or something undefinable only a baker could sense, but something is not right. Maybe the berries. Since when do we bake berries into simple bread? Turning it over in my hands, I inspect the loaf. The berries are an unfamiliar type. I think about the incalculable generosity of District 12 in sending it to me. And not to Prim, who would command their love infinitely more than I.

"Give it here," Glimmer demands. Hunger has dulled her sensibilities. She tears it out of my hands, rips off a large chunk, and stuffs that in her mouth. Slow chewing. She swallows and closes her eyes, savoring the taste.

She smirks at me. "Not bad for a dinky little—" She stops, and her hand goes to her throat. Then her nails constrict. Glimmer begins to choke, and the bread falls from her hands. She doubles over like she's hugging herself. Little croaking noises escape and her eyes bulge, veins in her throat reddening and popping out.

In less than twenty seconds, she's dead. I'm flabbergasted.

Clove inspects the loaf. "Nightlock berries." She must have paid some attention to the edible plants station. Then she stares at me. "Oh my God," she says softly, with a little smile that is alien on her face. "Your district sent you poisoned bread."

Poisoned. District 12 scraped and saved to send me a loaf of poisoned bread. With impressive detachment I wonder how many squirrels Katniss took out through the eye, how many snares Hawthorne set, how many illegal transactions had gone down in the Hob to ensure that I would receive this one gift that would be the death of me.

I cannot help but laugh. Words and deeds. With them I am so good at coaxing people into liking me. An enormous Capitol crowd is testament to that. And with words and deeds I am also so good at convincing them to think the worst of me. This has to be the first time ever that a District has attempted to interfere this way. With their own tribute. I'm setting a lot of precedents here.

Haymitch has got to be breathless with anger right now. I doubt he knew the bread was poisoned. Not only would it demolish his standing as a mentor, which he doesn't care much about anyway, he's too smart not to know what I'm trying to do. At this moment somebody is facing his wrath.

"Whoa," comments Scalon. "Has that ever happened?"

He doesn't seem too out of sorts at the death of his ally.

I ransack my memory and come up with a story they used to bore us with in class. During one of the first handfuls of Games, one of the Career districts, I forget which, sent poisoned medicine to a rival district's tribute. Retribution from the Capitol was swift and furious. What will they do to District 12?

Panic wells in my gut. The bread was meant for me, but will that matter? I doubt they're upset at Glimmer's death, even if they're disappointed I didn't go down too. It's still a district trying to tilt the chances in favor of a particular tribute. Or maybe it's not the district collectively, just the few that planned this. I don't know. I don't want to know. I want to cry. I don't cry.

"I should have let Marvel have some," I say.

Clove barks a laugh. Marvel at least looks thrown by Glimmer's death, or maybe he's white because he'd been thinking of snatching the loaf from my hand as she had.

I stand and wave at the sky with a cheeky grin as though to say: Hello, District 12. Nice try.

We scram so the hovercraft can retrieve her body.

Something about the bread is bothering me, but I don't know what. Aside, I mean, from the obvious implication that I am so despised at home. Thinking about it is painful so I turn my attentions elsewhere, but it lingers there until I address it.

I take the lead without thinking, propelled forward by the things dwelling in the back of my mind.

Clove trots up to keep pace with me. "So it doesn't look like you can expect a happy reunion," she comments in a low, but flippant, tone.

I don't say anything.

Inspecting her nails, which are still marvelously manicured from the interview night, Clove takes my silence as an invitation to continue. "Let's be honest," she says, "there is no chance you're going to go home, welcoming committee or no."

"Really?" I grumble. I can't think of anything properly sarcastic.

"They love their little tot. Even if you won by freak accident, you'd still be going back to a district that will cut your throat in your sleep the first chance it gets."

"I could dig a moat."

She flicks her eyes at me disparagingly. "Be real. This isn't happening for you."

Thank you, Clove, that wasn't obvious from the get-go. "Is this the traditional District 2 pep talk?" I ask. Why is she harping on this? Just making me more miserable?

Clove is breezily heedless of my mood. "Marvel doesn't like you. Scalon's not a fan. Face it; Glimmer, Lanka and I were the reason you got this far. Now I'm the only one between you and a knife in the heart."

"I thought you guys aimed for the back," I mutter.

"Whatever. The point is, I'm your only ally now. And come on, do you really want to see either of _them_ win?" She means Marvel and Scalon.

I almost stop to stare at her. "Are you suggesting—like, a sub-alliance?"

She shrugs. "Call it whatever you want. But you've got nothing to lose."

"Nothing to gain, either," I point out. "There's nothing in it for me."

Clove narrows her eyes. "You could gain your next breath," she says in a warning tone. Then she straightens and smooths her face. "I'll give you a good death. Quick and easy."

I laugh. "Still sounds like you're getting the better end of the deal."

"Fine. Then I'll do the same for the girl," says Clove.

Now I do miss a step. "Prim?"

"No, your _other_ district partner. Duh. Yeah, Prim. She won't even see it coming." She raises her eyebrows. "Or, we could drop this and when I see her, I'll take my time."

She's a foot away. It would be so easy to clock her. If I didn't know I'd look down to find a knife in my ribs for the trouble. Clove's studying my face, knowing she's striking a nerve.

Abruptly, I sense a trap. She's trying to trick me into admitting that I care one way or the other what happens to Prim. Clove is not about to buy any defeatism from me; she knows I'm going to do my damnedest however unpopular I am at home right now. My ploy to buddy up with the Careers is more transparent to her than the others.

"Thresh and the girl from 5 are still out there," I say. "They'll probably get to her before you can."

At the mention of those two, Clove looks thoughtful and begins to speak in a register that's audible to the guys trailing behind us.

"I could have predicted Thresh," she muses. "Not the 5 girl—what's her name? Wynnie? Wynna?"

"Wynne," supplies Marvel, tossing a clod of dirt at a tree trunk. Of course he remembers all the girls' names.

"Whiny Wynne," adds Scalon with a laugh. "Wimpy, wussy, weird old Wynne."

Ugh. Schoolyard witticism. Courtesy of the guy whose head whistles in a crosswind. I doubt the Careers even suspect that witty, wary, _wily_ Wynne probably set the field on fire and sneaked mutt-bugs into our gear.

But I've succeeded in changing the subject, and Clove doesn't bring it up again.

It's in the dead of night when I realize what it is that's been bothering me. We are sleeping in another field, in the open. The danger of another field fire is not so great as that of enemies the trees can hide.

Nightlock.

Those berries don't grow in District 12, I know that. I know all the berries that grow within the fences, because we use the edible ones for the bakery sometimes. None of the scraggly gardens that District 12 can boast of contains that berry. Peacekeepers see to that, since technically poisonous berries are a weapon and weapons are about the only thing that our Peacekeepers monitor with vigilance.

If anything, nightlock grows _around_ District 12. Maybe Katniss could have gathered the berries in her woods, but neither she nor Hawthorne would ever risk her remaining friends and family by indicating someone from our District slips beyond the fences.

Somebody else sent me these. And District 12 will likely be punished for it. Why would they be framed?

In spite of my worry, I'm relieved that Katniss Everdeen has not tried to kill me. I think. She might try if she thinks she can get away with it. I don't know how desperate Prim's condition is. I'm so relieved I have to turn over so nobody sees how affected I am.

...

n: thanks to everybody who has reviewed/favorited/kept this story on alert. If you have any thoughts I'd love to hear 'em.


	3. Chapter 3

T for language and violence in this chapter.

...

Let this be the morning, I think when the sun breaks over the horizon. Let today be the day I can rid myself of them. I've had this thought the past couple of days.

They're still asleep. Or appear to be. Clove's breathing seems too shallow. Scalon's eyes move beneath his lids. We're entering the stage of paranoia that descends upon all the alliances eventually. Inevitably.

I pick at the grass. I always volunteer for the shifts that span the early hours. Maybe I'm in the Hunger Games, but I still have to keep baker's hours. This way I get to watch the sun rise on a day I wasn't sure I'd live to see.

Wow, I am getting morbid.

No cannons have boomed lately. The Capitol will be impatient. It strikes me that this is the first time in a while that both tributes from District 12 have survived to reach the final eight. Not like it matters, if neither of you win. No consolation prizes here. For our district it's always been worse when the tribute's made it past the first few days, because no matter how realistic you are, there's always that faint niggling hope that blooms in spite of our ingrained pessimism: that maybe, _this_ year, we'll win; and that hope is extinguished when somebody douses our tribute's flame with an axe to the chest.

Placing second in the school's wrestling competition last year had gotten me a ribbon and a cool repuation. Never mind that Pace held his first-place victory over my head the rest of the school year, pinning his blue ribbon in our room where I'd see it every day. He was older and more experienced, and I'd given him a good run for his money near the end of the match. It made me feel pretty good. We don't always have a lot to celebrate.

Here, second place doesn't mean anything to anyone except the Capitol spectators placing bets, and they'll wager on anything from the Victor to which tribute dies first and all of the gory scenarios in between. To us and our districts, placing second just means you're the last to die.

I yawn and stretch. Scratch at the dirt.

Scalon's the first to shake the pretense of sleeping. He rises and stretches unconvincingly. "You can sleep," he says. "I'll keep watch for a while."

The hell no. "Sun's almost up."

He looks disappointed. The guy has no subtlety.

When everybody's dropped the sham, we start moving again. There's a meadow nearby, but none of us venture in. There's a feeling of something hidden in the tall grass there, snakes or mutts or Thresh, and none of us like the feeling of being the prey.

"Let's go check the traps," suggests Marvel.

He's referring to the snares and lures that Lanka set while she was alive, the day before tracker jackers made a horror of her. With her knowledge of ropes and nets and knots, she scattered the traps in locations around the field we'd camped in. One particularly nasty ruse was strung up with twine, twigs and a trip line designed to trigger a silver bow, the only weapon of its kind in the arena, into shooting an arrow through unlucky passerby.

It's a common tactic from the District 4 tributes. Sometimes something comes of the snares, sometimes they bring up nothing. But even if all they yielded was a rabbit, that would be a victory now.

Marvel and Clove buddy up. I'm stuck with Scalon, who's strung tighter than one of Lanka's snares.

I'm wary. What Clove had said before, about Marvel and Scalon wanting to be rid of me, was intended at the time to throw me off balance, but it may be true even so. Certainly I'm not eager to pal around with Scalon, alone.

I don't say much as we trudge up one of the paths, although Scalon goes on for a while about an 'accidental' death he'd caused back in District 2 a few years before. The big brute has calmed down a little, maybe because of Axel's recent death. I've never known anybody sated by bloodlust. People like him just don't _exist_ in District 12.

"So we're, ah—horsing around, right," Scalon says, waving his wands around animatedly. It's clear he's talking about training, but since that's not exactly apropos for the Games he's skirting the obvious with the delicacy of an ox. "Having some fun with wooden swords. 'Cause if they were real there wouldn't hardly be anybody left to reap."

He laughs. Following his cue, I chuckle. And when he can't see, I roll my eyes for the cameras.

Mimicking holding a sword, Scalon goes on. "And we're squaring off in this ring, okay, me and this kid who wasn't one-twenty soaking wet."

"Uh-huh."

Scalon swings his imaginary sword. "And me a good one-eighty back then. He's quick, you know, snakey-like, and he gets in some good licks. A pop on the shoulder, or behind the knee, or on the noggin."

I can imagine the scene. Like a horsefly badgering a bull.

"So I'm getting irritated, okay, and I remember this move I saw on television once. 42nd Games. I get the kid to trip, and I take my sword, like this," he mimes the motion, "and drive it straight down on his head. Course with a wooden sword it ain't supposed to do much, but it goes through his skull anyway."

"Whoops," I say.

"Yeah. It was like sticking a ripe tomato."

Way to ruin tomatoes for me. "Did you get in trouble?"

"Naw, not really," says Scalon dismissively. "I even got an extra slip out of it."

An extra slip...for the reaping? "They _reward_ you guys with slips?" I ask, baffled.

Scalon gives the sword one last swing and sheathes it back into his imagination. "Yeah," he says. "Like for school contests and stuff. My first year I had my name in the bowl ten times." He straightens impressively.

I hardly know what to say.

The first trap yields nothing. The silver bow is stretched taut, waiting for a target. I think about tripping Scalon to oblige. He moves on too quickly. Neither of us turns our back to the other.

My fingers brush the hilt of my knife.

Coming up on the next trap, we hear rustling and frustrated squirms. We jog forward, me with dread.

Rue is struggling desperately in the net, but stops as we approach. Her eyes are wide and bright and scared. They fix on me. And on the knife I clutch with white knuckles.

Oh, no.

I scan the surrounding trees. Prim is nowhere in sight.

"About time," says Scalon. "Been getting a little boring." He removes his double-edged blade from his back.

An ugly voice in the back of my head says,_ You can't save them both._

"Do you want to finish her?" Scalon asks me in a casual drawl.

I shake my head, unable to speak.

_Rue is not Katniss's little sister._

He shrugs and hefts his blade, ready to send it into the little girl ensnared in Lanka's net.

_One of them has to die. Remember why you're doing this._

What I remember is the girl who died by the fire the first night, and what I would have done to Scalon had that girl been Prim.

_Or_ Rue.

Because take Katniss out of this, and the one is as much a twelve-year-old kid as the other.

He draws his arm back. The blade tip is aimed with deadly certainty. Rue shrinks.

We move at the same time. I move faster. Whipping my hand in a blur, I round on him. In a flash my knife is hilt-deep in his neck. My hand clamps over his mouth to prevent his screams from alerting the Careers for one precious second, but it isn't necessary. The only sound he's capable of making is a deep, wet gurgle. Blood flows over my fingers, hot and fast.

He slumps to the floor, still gripping his blade. Scalon dies with his eyes open.

Rue stares at me.

I set to work slicing the ropes and she squirms out. "Is Prim okay?" I say hoarsely.

She nods, and points a tiny hand in one direction. "She's waiting for me at the stream."

The cannon booms. The Careers must be confused. I hear them crashing through the trees, now. They don't know what's happened but they knew where Lanka's trap had been set.

"Go!" I hiss. Rue spares me a quick, sad smile, and springs into the woods.

"Scalon! Mellark!" Marvel's voice booms through the trees.

I don't have time to think. I tear the knife from Scalon's neck and run over to the nearest tree to crouch at its side, waiting for the telltale pound of the boy's feet. He bulls through the bushes and stops just past me. I don't wait for him to turn around.

I hurtle at him and bring the knife down, but he swivels and by sheer luck the edge only slices his shoulder. He grunts. My advantage of suprise doesn't last long, maybe because he's been expecting it at some point soon. The heel of his hand crashes into my solar plexus and I go down on one knee, trying to breathe.

"Pathetic," snarls Marvel. I don't know if he means Rue or my low tolerance for having my chest caved in. Either way this doesn't look good. Where's my knife? I stare at my hand and don't see it clenched there.

Marvel has his spear but isn't drawing it. Taking a boxing stance, he raises his fists. I gape at him. He actually wants to slug it out. He must have been wanting to ever since he'd seen my match in the Cornucopia. Prove his superiority or whatever. Oh, I bet the crowd is going crazy now.

"You're not serious," I say, just to make sure.

"Don't think you can take me?" he taunts.

Every breath I take is laborious. I try to buy time.

"You haven't showered in a week. I'm not taking you anywhere."

Senses of humor are usually pretty zapped by this point in the Games. Marvel's well, which has always run low, is dry. "Get set," he snaps.

Glimmer's not around for him to impress anymore but there's still a big old Capitol audience hanging on every move. I set.

Marvel's not so broad as Scalon was, but he's just as tall—he's got a good five inches on me—and has a wiry strength that the other Careers lacked. His reach is much longer than mine. I might be stronger. Once I get my breath back.

He doesn't take the same stance the instructor showed me. His feet are set differently, farther apart, bending his knees. Bringing up my own fists, I barely crouch.

Marvel launches. His clenched hand heads directly for my face. It's fast, but I dodge it, and immediately have my feet knocked from under me when Marvel sweeps his leg. Rolling, I scramble up just as he brings his foot crashing down. There's no time to prepare myself before he attacks again, sending his heel smashing into my head in a spinning kick. It doesn't connect perfectly but well enough to be effective.

I go down dizzy and just as quickly reel up to my feet. Cannot give him a second. This little thing overrides every yen I have to stay sitting and let the little mockingjays flit around my head. I spring away from a punch while the world spins.

"Guess that's the advanced class, huh?" I pant.

Marvel scowls. Everybody knows his district trains ahead of time, which is illegal, but there's some unspoken rule against throwing it in the Capitol's face. Well, too bad. My manners are taking a beating too.

If I'd been trained since I could walk, the way he was, I might prove a match for him now. I have some speed and strength. Marvel has a healthy supply of both and the training to boot. Shortly in it's clear who has the upper hand here, and he gets in a majority of the blows while I don't manage more than a lick or two. Fortunately I have the endurance to remain standing.

He whips his foot at my face again and I duck, almost indignant he thought he could try the same move twice. I get in a good jab at his standing ankle, knocking him off balance.

Marvel stumbles and then straightens right into my line of fight. Instantly I draw my arm back and pack every sack of flour I've ever tossed around the bakery into a punch that takes him squarely in the face. I feel his jaw break.

He pitches back and slams into a tree. I leap for him.

A glint warns me, but too late to avoid it. I twist and the knife misses the vulnerable place just above my groin, sinking into my upper thigh.

I howl. Marvel yanks out the blade. The next swipe goes over my head as my leg gives. My fingers wrap around the spear he's still carrying on his back, loosely tied and bouncing, and I jerk it away to thrust it blindly overhead.

Marvel yells in pain. The spear has pierced his shoulder. The knife drops from his hand. No time to lose. I grab at the knife and drive the point through the top of his boot. Blood spurts.

His scream is animalistic.

Hobbling back, Marvel curses me foully.

"Language," I scold though gritted teeth. "Kids are watching."

He goggles at me. "You're insane. You are fucking crazy."

Pain always manifests a kind of hilarity in me. I admit it's a little out of place at the moment.

Standstill. We're both in our corners, more concerned with nursing our wounds than inflicting any more on the other. Assuming I survive this fight, I'm going to have a whopper of a migraine. Not to mention my _stab wound_. It appears to have missed anything vital. Lucky me; it's just bleeding and super excrutiating.

"You cheated!" I give him an accusatory glare.

Marvel huffs and rolls his eyes. "You're such a kid."

He pushes away from the tree, approaching warily in a deep limp. Already his jaw has swollen immensely, and hangs slack. Reaching down, he draws the knife from his foot in a motion that makes me wince. His pain tolerance is incredible.

I try to rise up straight but my body's not cooperating. Blood seeps through my fingers. Marvel smiles through red teeth.

"Good night, Loverboy," he says.

No, I think, not yet, not yet.

_No—_

For the second time my death is postponed by a timely intervention. A huge rock crashes down on Marvel's head from above and he drops; I stare at the ruined mess of his head before lifting my gaze to see the red-haired girl from District 5 swinging down from a heavy branch. Neither of us had had any idea she was there.

She lands lightly with the grace of a natural gymnast and straightens with a spring. In answer to my amazement she says, "I really didn't like him."

"Thanks," I say, not sure if she's just going to take advantage of my situation and kill me herself.

"I could just take advantage and kill you myself," she says.

"Are you going to?"

Hesitation stalls her. I'm not totally sure why. Perhaps she thinks I'm still strong enough to take her in a fight. Hunger has thinned her face and body; it probably took all she had to lug the big rock up into the branches. Or raise it up with a pulley of twine, as I'm beginning to see. She certainly hasn't seemed to have a moral problem with picking off her opponents.

Speaking of which.

"That was smart, the smoky jar," I say.

"That was smart, backstabbing the Careers," she says right back.

I wince. 'Backstabbing' is such a harsh word but I guess that's accurate. There was nothing honest in what I'd done.

"Did you set the field on fire?" I ask.

"Yes."

"And the explosion?"

"No. Shut up." The girl isn't fooled by my attempt to keep her talking. She's assessing my injuries. Evidently what she sees doesn't persuade her to attack. After a lingering, critical look she says, "Later," and vanishes through the trees, apparently to make a reappearance when my wounds have weakened me further, or have killed me altogether so she doesn't have to.

"See ya," I growl, hand over the open cut. It's deep. I can't see how it didn't sever an artery or anything.

Time to go. I turn from the grisly sights of Scalon and Marvel and begin hobbling deeper into the woods. I even make it like, four steps before I stagger to a halt and sag. No, Clove. She'd be just delighted to find me like this, and two of her rivals gutted for her.

The idea of Clove finding me spurs me on. For all her self control, there's some dark mania that lurks beneath. I can believe she genuinely enjoys hurting people, likes feeling them falter under her hand and cry out. Compared to her, Scalon had been positively businesslike.

With many pauses, I follow the stream and make it to an alcove—more of a hollow—next to a little waterfall, fairly well hidden and buffeted from the wind by scrub. First I fill up my canteen, the only item I have with me other than the bread, with water. Now I need to take stock of my situation.

It's a brief assessment. No food, no extra clothes, no shelter. Zero weapons.

I pass the evening fitfully. A snake attempts to get neighborly with me but I evict it with a long stick and it sets up residence elsewhere. Chill soon overcomes my better instincts and I scrape enough wood and brush together for a pitiful fire. I'm already hurt and hungry, I'm done being cold.

Nobody is drawn to the fire. Probably we're all waging our individual battles in the night, now.

As though on cue, before the sun is totally risen the next morning, Claudius Templesmith's voice booms across the arena.

"You are invited," says Templesmith, "to a feast!"

The Feast. Where tributes duke it out over a heel of bread or a bit of meat. Even if I were capable of traveling to the Feast, I'm in no shape to fight. My thigh has subsided into a dull, terrible thudding pain that persistently gnaws at me.

"Thanks, but I already have a dinner date," I say aloud. "Me and this rock here. We're going to split a mud pie."

"By now you're all familiar with the stream," continues Templesmith. "And along that stream there is a _delightful_ waterfall."

Waterfall? Next to a stream. Next to an alcove. _Shit_.

Maybe I can beat it before— "Forgive us our terrible manners," says Templesmith, "We haven't laid out your places properly. But if you make good time, you'll find us very generous hosts. The Feast begins NOW."

I don't have time to gape at my astonishingly bad luck before a hovercraft zooms out of nowhere and loiters just above my hiding place. A door in the belly opens, and little gold parachutes drift lazily to the ground, landing on the stream bed near the base of some trees. The others have got to be close, or we wouldn't all be familiar with the little waterfall.

They're sitting not a hundred feet away. Could I hobble fast enough to snag a parachute and get away before I'm seen? I see two with big shiny 12 logos stamped on them. Yeah, maybe. I could—

A flash of red alerts me. Wynne parts the little waterfall like a curtain from behind and bounds onto the stream bed. What the _hell_? Where'd she come from? Had she seriously been hiding behind the waterfall? A sick feeling weighs me down. She'd been following me. Waiting to see how my injuries would affect me.

She must need the Feast more than an element of surprise. Wicked Wynne darts forward and grabs the bag, then gives me a fleeting laugh and sprints away. I don't oblige her with a glare. If she needs that bag so much, she can't be doing as well as she's passing off.

Fine. I rouse myself and brush the dirt from my hands. This might be the best way to figure out how to reach Rue and Prim. I edge forward to where my hollow meets the brush and I wait. The rock I'd been making dinner plans with is now hefted in my hand, my only weapon.

Before long, Thresh appears at the waterfall where Wynne was just hiding. His head turns, left and right, scoping for us, then he cautiously draws forward. Only he, Clove, Wynne, the girls and myself are left. It's an odd assortment this time. Usually there's more than one Career left at this point.

Thresh picks up his parachute. Nobody shows up to challenge him. He looks better off than any of us. Giving one last sparing look, he then turns and jogs away in the direction of the meadows. I'm startled at how close the Career pack had been skirting his domain without realizing.

Silence. This has got to be one of the most boring Feasts they've seen in a while. Hell, I'll even let Clove get her bag without raising a ruckus if she shows up.

A loop descends toward the ground. I watch the rope lower, almost entranced. Knotted into the rope is a hook, and it makes a couple of low passes before it catches one in the silk parachute. Snagged, it then draws slowly up, raising the bag.

A bag marked 11.

Rue!

I stare at the trees, trying to make her out. I want to run out, yammering, but I don't. Clove hasn't shown up yet.

The little gold bag disappears into the branches. Still I can't see exactly where she is. She's remarkably adept at moving invisibly through the trees. Well, she's alive. Maybe she and Prim have found each other again.

I'm about to chance my own reveal when the hook lowers again, glinting dully in the low light. It drops until it's hovering directly over another bag. This one is marked with a 12, and it has a little bow tied to it. Indicating it's for a girl, I guess.

Prim! She's there too! I almost laugh out of relief. I'd known she hadn't died, but her condition was utterly unknown to me. But they're there together.

I watch the hook catch the bag and rise with a big loopy grin on my face. Perhaps I just ought to let those two band together and try to keep tabs on them from afar. Aside from falling into Lanka's net, they've done just fine.

If Clove hadn't seen the poisoned loaf already, I'd think about sneaking it into her parachute.

A movement, in the brush.

Clove.

She runs forward and grabs hold of the rope, and gives it a good hard yank. Squeals erupt from the branches. Clove tugs again, a huge effort.

Rue's pulled forward, out of the tree. "Aaa!" she shouts, as she scrabbles for a grip.

She had the foresight to tether herself with a rope so that she didn't crash to the ground, but its length is enough to leave her dangling helplessly in midair. She spins there, struggling.

Clove smiles. Flips her knife. Raises it. "I was hoping I'd get some leisure time."

I'm out and moving, but I'm too far away. I whistle. Clove swivels her head and sees me there. I lobb the rock at her, using all my strength. She's standing too close to Rue for me to aim at her head, but the rock hurtles toward her feet. Clove yelps and jumps up to avoid having her ankles shattered.

She regains her balance and wheels to face me. "Not this time," she says with a wild grin. Her knife is headed directly for Rue's throat.

Rue's eyes are huge and frightened. I won't get there in time.

There's a blur as a bag is dropped from the sky. The golden bag marked 11 lands squarely in Clove's face.

"You leave her alone," shouts a terrified voice. I look up to see Prim framed in the leaves. Her eyes are as big as Rue's.

Prim sees me. "Peeta!" she cries. "Don't let her!"

How Prim can have this innate faith in me, I have no idea. But the bag has distracted Clove and it's enough time for me to get closer. Another flash and a knife is tossed from the tree, tumbling to my feet.

Rue's sawing at the rope with a little pocket knife. Clove is up on her feet in a moment and for an instant looks like she's considering gutting the kid right there, but I'm too close now, tottering to the rescue like a brazen drunk. She turns to me with her knife.

Oh, goody. The baker's boy versus the crazy girl with the knives. Exactly the match I'd been hoping to avoid. I pick up the knife that Prim threw.

Clove does a complicated twirl of the knife with her knuckles, as though to emphasize how easy this fight will be. Rue finishes cutting and lands in a heap on the floor. Then she scrambles back and out of reach, shooting up the tree again quick as a squirrel.

"You okay?" I raise my voice.

"Yeah," chorus the girls in the tree.

Clove rolls her eyes. "Aww."

"Want some bread?" I ask her, waggling the poisoned loaf I've kept with me.

She scrunches her face. "Why do you keep that? It will go stale."

I'm used to stale. "Yeah that's my real worry. That it's spoiled."

I toss the wrapped loaf down onto the leaves. I'm not done with that bread yet.

"You're awfully sentimental about a gift that was supposed to murder you," Clove says. "But before I'm through with you, those nightlock berries are going to look really appetizing."

I say conversationally, "It's occurred to me that nightlock doesn't grow in District 12."

This puzzles her, much as I expect it's puzzling Panem, and she frowns. Then shakes it off. "Looks like Scalon gave you a fight," says Clove. She drops into a crouch.

"No," I say, "that's courtesy of Marvel. Scalon was easy."

Both are now dead. Maybe she'll think I took them both out, and see me as a bigger threat.

She doesn't. She smiles.

I expect her attack but not how fast it is. I avoid the first swipe more from shock than any conscious attempt to duck. Her wrist flashes and another knife appears magically in her hand. It flares and leaves a bloody line in my shoulder.

I stumble. She's faster than me. My thigh is on fire.

Clove doesn't press her advantage. From her easy, strolling walk around me, she doesn't feel the need to. I circle so my back is never to her.

She moves again, aiming low for my abdomen. I twist and catch one of her wrists. The other arcs and narrowly misses severing my jugular. Catching my head instead, it drags along the back deeply enough to scrape against bone. I cry out. Spin her away. Instinctively place my hand to my head, and it comes away bloody. My knife's laying on the ground.

Enough of this, I think dizzily. I'm not going down to someone I outweigh by like fifty pounds. When she turns lightly on her toes, ready to drive the knife again, I pop her right in the face with my elbow, and then when she jerks back with a bloody nose and busted lip I chop at her wrist. She drops the knife in her right hand. I kick the dirt and send a shower of earth and leaves into her eyes.

Clove staggers back, clutching her face. I only have a second or two, but I'm faltering. My thigh is an open sore and blood's running down the side of my neck in rivulets.

"Peeta, your bag," says Prim from the branches. I turn to look where she's pointing and see the last bag of the Feast, sitting there with a big number 12 stitched bright and golden. The fight has taken me just a few steps away from it.

I'd forgotten all about it. Clove is distracted and too far away to stop me. She could throw her knife, but I think it's her last and she'd only risk losing it. Let it be weapons, I hope fervently as I limp over to it, open it and feel inside.

I laugh. Hold up a pair of brass knuckles to the light. They glow dully. "I can work with these," I say.

Wish I'd gotten them sooner. They might have made a shorter fight of Marvel. But Thresh is still out there. And whatever the Gamemakers have in store for us. And Clove is right in front of me.

She's recovered, but warily studying me. And now I've got the knuckles. I slide them on, feeling like how that boy from District 4 must have felt when he got his trident several years ago. Suddenly I feel strong.

Whether it's the knuckles or my change in demeanor that sways her, Clove no longer seems eager to fight.

"Enjoy your toy," she says, and runs away through the trees.

Just like that, the fight's over. A minute or so passes and Rue drops to the ground, followed by Prim. Neither girl has any apprehension about hugging me.

"Hi, kids," I say.

"Your head," says Prim. She pulls it down and parts my hair to see the gash. "It's not bad," she assures me. Her tone is too mild. She begins rooting around her pockets. "Here," she announces, holding up a silver needle and a spool of thread.

"Where'd you get that?" I ask. "And what are you going to do with it?"

"I got it from a pack. And what do you think I'm going to do with it?"

Prim makes me sit and hold still while she dabs at the cut with something else she pulls from her bag, something astringent. I clench my teeth. Then she wets the edge of the thread, feeds it through the needle and begins to sew the skin on my head back together.

While she does, Rue picks up the bag. "What else is in here?"

After fishing out the brass knuckles I hadn't bothered to look. I nudge the bag over to her. Prim clucks at me to stay still.

Rue reaches inside and pulls out a few things. Medicine. Some crackers. A flask, filled with water. Kind of pointless, as we're next to a stream. A syringe filled with—morphling, good God. I'm not that badly off, I think grouchily. But it's a good Feast. Rue puts everything back in the bag and hands it to me.

Pausing, I remember the last gift I took from strangers. Careful to keep my head still, I hold the syringe up to the sun that filters through branches, as though I have the slightest clue what to look for. The liquid sparkles.

The medicine, a salve, could be lethal as well. Maybe the crackers. I don't set them down, but I don't use them right away either.

Prim finishes stitching my head. She and Rue look at me with curious expressions, wondering why I don't tear into the gifts.

"Nobody use this stuff," I say. "And dump out that canteen."

"Is this about the nightlock?" Prim asks. "What was that about?"

I don't want to tell her that to most of Panem, it looks like District 12 tried to poison one of their own tributes. "I got some poisoned bread before." I motion to the loaf sitting on the branches.

Their expressions are unreadable.

"I think somebody's trying to kill me," I say seriously.

For a moment we don't talk. Then we all double over laughing. It's the first time since we entered the arena that something is genuinely funny.

"Here, use this," says Rue as she giggles. She reaches into her own pack and draws out a tin with what looks like homemade salve. It smells like leaves. "It will help."

I take a glob and spread it over the back of my head and the wound that Marvel made. It's soothing and I breathe in relief. You aren't really aware of how badly something's been hurting while you're distracted. Running and fighting have been sufficient to occupy my mind.

Prim looks at the injury on my leg closely. "I don't think it's serious," she says. "You'd have bled out if it were. But now it won't get infected."

Medical savvy runs in the family, I know, but still I'm surprised by this and her ease in stitching me up. "You're a right little healer," I say.

She gets shy. I've only really known her a little while, but I can tell she's the sort of person who becomes bashful at compliments. Prim gathers up our things and we get moving.

"What's in your bags?" I ask as I limp. I'm too heavy for the girls to help along but they hover protectively anyway.

Rue holds up some things. "Some food, water, a knife. Hooks."

"I got some soap earlier," says Prim. No wonder they look cleaner than the rest of us. I must appear a mess. Matted and bloody. "You can use it," Prim adds tactfully. "It will keep your leg clean."

And the rest of me, too. "Thanks." It occurs to me that she's being taken care of. "You've gotten gifts from sponsors?"

Prim goes red, realizing that all I've gotten is a loaf of bread with nightlock berries. "Some," she mutters.

I'm not mad. I haven't exactly fostered a popular image since we entered the arena. I haven't meant to. "Good," I say. "You need them more."

This suffices to prick her dignity and she makes a face at me.

At first glance no two sisters are so dissimilar as she and Katniss, and after a good look no two are so alike. I can just imagine how Katniss would react. "After all," I continue, "You're just a little kid."

"You're a kid too," objects Rue.

"You're bitty little twigs," I say, stepping over a log with effort. "A strong wind would carry you away."

I grin at their irritated faces. I've had older brothers but they haven't. Now I know how it is to tease a little sister. But what I'm saying isn't really meant for them. It's meant for the Capitol audience. Regardless of what happens here, I'm going to make sure they remember that we're children.

We walk—lamely, in my case—for a minute or two in silence. Then Primrose says quietly, "I didn't know you liked Katniss."

"You didn't know me," I say, trying not to sound flustered.

She peers at me. "Everybody knows you. You're so popular in school."

Popular? I'm genuinely surprised. Never have I thought that getting along with people necessarily translates that way.

"Why?" asks Prim. "Why do you like her?"

I make a face like she did just a few moments ago. "Don't you think your sister is likable?"

Prim's not diverted by my deflective comment. "No, Katniss is lovable, but she's not likable," she says. "Not to people she doesn't know. She doesn't want to be. You like to be friends with people you've never even met."

Sorry for airing the laundry across Panem, Katniss. I'd like to be able to truly ignore the cameras.

Prim lets me think but she's not about to drop the subject. It's turned around; I've been playing the annoying older brother and now she's assumed the role of interrogative little sister. "My dad was in love with your mother, once," I say at last.

"He was?" Her eyes are wide. Rue's watching the exchange with interest. "She's never said anything about it."

"He only mentioned it the one time," I admit. "My first day of school. He pointed out your sister to me and said, 'I wanted to marry her mother, but she ran off with a coal miner.'"

Prim's eyes are misty. "Dad was so good," she says softly.

I agree. "I asked my dad why a coal miner? And he told me that when your father sang, birds stopped to listen."

My little friend is quiet. We maneuver around trees and over rocks, keeping a vigilant eye out. "They did," she says finally. "They really did, he sang so beautifully." She looks up at me. "So in a way, you've known Katniss for ages."

"I don't know about that," I say. Apart from the incident outside the bakery, we've never acknowledged each other.

"You have," Prim insists with odd vehemence. "Why didn't you ever talk to her?"

Dozens of answers roll through my head, everything from cowardice to awkwardness. Mainly, though, it was guilt. After Mr Everdeen died, I would have felt ashamed to approach Katniss. I can't say why. "I was going to talk to her after our last reaping," I say. That much is true, and it will conveniently send the audience into tears.

That night we all sleep up in the trees. For the first time since we came to the arena, I sleep with neither eye open. Yet I can't help but feel that the Gamemakers have gone too easy on us.

...

n: Thanks for reading :) would love to know your thoughts.


	4. Chapter 4

n: thanks to everyone who's read. The next chapter will be up soon.

...

It starts to rain.

One moment it's the listless quiet of the early hours; the next, a downpour begins like somebody turned on the faucet.

Is it real, or a fabrication of the Games? My money's on fake.

It presses down heavily, like a sheet, so you feel weighed down by the sheer force of it. Only a few seconds after it begins, the three of us are totally drenched. Pressing against the tree for shelter doesn't help at all.

Flash flood.

When I was ten or so, a horrific flood rushed through the whole of District 12, steeping the town in knee-deep water. The Seam fared much worse. People there were forced to take to their shoddy, badly tiled roofs. Anyone who didn't was swept away in the currents. Several miners drowned, unable to reach the sky before the colossal weight of the water collapsed one of the tunnels. Even a kid in town was torn from his house by the flood. They found his body washed down to the Seam much later.

We sit in the trees. I wonder if the other tributes are doing the same.

The artificial nature of the rain becomes apparent when it doesn't cease or change pressure after an hour. In only that amount of time, the ground has become a soggy mess.

To complete the effect, I guess, loud blasts of thunder accompany the rain. At first I think it's the cannon booming.

The danger is apparent. The flood may not rise high enough to reach us in the trees—or it could, it's hard to estimate just what resources the Capitol has at its control—but it will make it impossible for us to move when we inevitably need to.

"We oughta get to higher ground," I shout at them. Roaring rain threatens to drown my words.

They understand, and nod. We gather our supplies. At first I expect we'll all slide from the tree and travel by foot, but Rue shakes her head and trailblazes a way through the tree canopy, which is thick enough to create an unbroken path. She and Prim hop lightly from branch to branch, careful not to let the furious rain tear their grips away.

Soon it's too hard for me. Even were it bright and sunny, my weight and injuries are making this too difficult.

"I'm gonna chance it on the ground," I say. They don't like it but there's nothing else for it.

I slide from the lowest branches and land past ankle-deep in rising muck. "This is really gross," I comment, although nobody can hear me. "I was just joking about that mud pie."

The mud threatens to suck off my boots with each step. Eventually I'm just forced to take them off, string them together by the laces and throw them around my neck. Socks are stuffed into the boot toes.

Rain, rain, rain. It's been going on for a while now. I begin to worry about the possibility that the water, which is close to my knees now, will get too high to wade through. I'm not a swimmer. About the only thing I've paddled water in is the bathtub at home.

We head somewhere in the vague direction of 'uphill.' Water sloshes down the grade. The currents around my knees begin to take on added force over the next hour, and slowly the water level continues to rise.

Where does all this water _go?_ I'm not really knowledgeable about weather phenomena except to know that there are better ideas than standing under a tall tree during a thunderstorm. It just seems impossible to me that rain can collect so heavily in such a vast area.

Rain has so smothered every sound you could almost believe the roaring was contained in your head alone. It's a profoundly isolating feeling, making the two girls remote and unreachable.

The water passes my knees. Above, Rue and Prim are still threading through the canopy with some degree of success. Once we reach the higher ground, the trees will probably thin out.

There's a point to this but I'm not positive what. It's designed to herd us all to higher ground. Maybe we were spreading out too thinly for the Gamemakers' tastes.

The forest quickly appears almost eerily suspended in water. Right foot, left foot. Guess I don't need that bath anymore.

"Toss me that soap, I'm going to wash behind my ears," I holler at Prim, but my joke gets about an inch through the downpour.

She scrunches her face at me. She'd seen my lips move but couldn't read the words. I see her mouth, "What?"

I shake my head.

Sensing I'd made a dumb comment, she shakes her head too. Then she stops, and her eyes fix on something behind me.

I whirl around.

A large body half-floats in the water, about thirty feet away, partially caught in the low tangle of a tree. Thresh. I'd mistaken the cannon for thunder. Our proximity has prevented the hovercraft from retrieving his body.

How did he die? Even if he'd been asleep when the rain began, reflex would have kept him from drowning.

It happened recently. I really, really don't want to, but I wade forward warily to his body. Thresh's face is turned to the tree canopy. Most of his body is submerged. I try to block him so Rue can't look. Sneaking a look over my shoulder, I see she's stricken. Prim puts an arm around her shoulder.

Beyond caring about being drenched, I hang my pack on a branch and stoop in the water to inspect him. Immediately I see the bloody wound on his throat. He's still gripping his weapon, a large hammer I think he grabbed in the Cornucopia.

That doesn't look like a knife wound Clove could inflict. It looks like a wild beast ripped his throat open.

Thresh's eyes flicker, and open.

"Aaah!" I yell, and fall back in the water to land on my rear, sending up a torrent. I splutter and choke on the murk.

Eyes search the sky, then roll sideways and find me. So a cannon hadn't gone off after all.

He's in serious pain. So strong and tough, he's trembling. Breath comes in ragged gasps. His throat glistens.

Thresh has been so formidable that even in his state, I'm hesitant to approach him again. But the hand which grips the hammer doesn't rise from the water.

"What did this?" I ask.

His lips move. I can't hear what he says. I lean forward, putting my ear close.

He whispers, "Mutts."

Mutts.

I jerk and look around wildly. Nothing. What kind of mutts? Anything could be lurking in the woods, hidden by the flood.

Turning back to Thresh, I see his eyes are clouded over in pain. He suffers quietly, like he always must have.

"What kind of mutts?" I ask him, feeling sorry for taxing his last strength. My voice is a normal volume, but in the rain it sounds like a murmur.

Thresh's eyes are half-lidded. "They're...wrong," he says.

I won't get more than that. He's in such agony. Death won't come to him easily; he's spent too many years battling the odds. But I don't know what to do for him. I can't put the knife in his heart like I did with the girl from District 8. Besides Rue seeing, it just doesn't feel right. One lunch didn't make us friends, but he means something different than the other tributes.

Leaving him like this is not an option either. I rock on my knees, shoulder deep in the flood water, helpless.

The morphling. I take the syringe from my pack. It may be poisoned, it may not. Either way, it's a solution.

I hold it up for him to see. Thresh's eyes settle on it. Minutely, he nods.

"I'm sorry," I say, as I inject the morphling into his chest. All of it.

His eyes flutter and close, and I can see but not hear his last breath. Thresh dies.

Now I distinctly hear the cannon boom.

Again, I feel a world away. They will need to retrieve his body. So they can send him back to District 11 in one of the clean white boxes, the way they will send me to District 12. Rue has told me they love to sing in her District, for any and every reason. I hope Thresh is buried with a song, not the silence and gloom that await me.

Maybe they'll whistle the tune Rue taught us, the notes that mean safe and sound, it's time to go home. Go home, Thresh.

I slowly make my way back to Prim and Rue. Rue's head is buried in Prim's shoulder. Motioning for them to move on, we leave Thresh's body behind.

Two hours pass, and we're encountering two problems: the trees have thinned out too much to let the girls hop along the branches, and the water has gotten too high to navigate.

I have to stop. Put my hand on the tree trunk and lean over, breathing hard. The stab wound in my thigh has gotten raw again from exertion, though it's not bleeding copiously. I can't see it through the muddy water; the line has reached my waist.

Rue shimmies down. "I don't think we can go any farther," she shouts above the water.

I shake my head.

She splashes down into the water. Prim follows. The water level reaches their shoulders. Soon they'll be forced to swim.

The three of us begin to wade together. Prim and Rue clutch a rope; I hold its end. I feel a little like I'm leading a class of schoolkids. Isn't that funny, before the Games I'd begun wondering if I ought to be a schoolteacher if it turned out my dad needn't need three grown boys—and their eventual families—crowding in the bakery. Family businesses don't always need all hands on deck.

Fortunately we've reached the incline at last and are rewarded with a drop of the water level, saving us the trouble of learning to swim the hard way. _Un_fortunately, the incline is proving a challenge in itself. Between fighting the spillage of water rushing from the heights and wrenching our feet from mud with every step, we're still in danger of being knocked backwards, down the slope.

I take the rope that's been looped around my shoulders and Prim hands down one of their big hooks. Rue knots them together and talks me through swinging the rope so that the hook catches on the branch of a tree ahead of us. Then we each hoist ourselves forward until we reach the tree, and do it again.

Exhaustion and action have numbed my leg. I catch my toe and fall forward. We're well uphill and the flood cascades over my head. I swallow a lungful of the stuff and lurch up, hacking.

"I see the ridge," says Rue. She looks tired too.

A craggy wall, too short to be a cliff really, faces us. Above it is the ground we're aiming for. Relief puts some more spring in our step and we clumsily crash over to it. Blessed rock. It shouldn't be difficult to climb, it's not a sheer face and there are lots of skanky-looking shrubs and trees to provide handholds.

Rue scrambles up with alacrity. Prim follows with uncertain motions. I doubt she's even climbed a tree before she went into the arena. I'm last, and every foot is gained with great effort.

Once we reach the top, me collapsing on my side the moment we do, the rain stops. Like somebody flipped the switch. Which they probably did.

"Son of a bitch," I mutter into the mud. Prim's too exhausted to scold me.

The sun comes out and sets to work baking the mud onto our skin. I'm so tired, I lay there not moving. Neither Prim nor Rue protest. We just lay in little heaps on the ridge top.

Rue drifts off to sleep almost at once. I'm close to it. My eyes flutter.

Prim wriggles up. "Peeta," she whispers.

"Yeah?"

"I can't." Her eyes are big and blue and sad.

"Can't what?"

Prim does not immediately respond. Her gaze tracks the clouds, which are drifting over an early moon that still shares the sky with the waning sun. "I can't beat Rue," she says finally, still keeping her voice down. "Make her lose, I mean. I don't want to. I won't."

Why had I dared to hope that this kid was oblivious to the inevitable? I try to think of something to say.

"Rue says you saved her when she was caught in the net." Prim analyzes my face, keen to pick up any clue to my thoughts.

I don't know how to say why I did it in a way that doesn't sound like I chose one of them over the other.

Before I can try, Prim says, "Thank you."

That renders me thunderstruck. Prim is as much as telling me that she's choosing Rue over herself. Like the moment on the train, when she told me I could win the Games, she reveals a selflessness that is way above me. And it's heartbreaking.

"Prim, listen to me," I whisper. "I'm going to look out for you _both_. Okay? And you two look out for each other. That's how this works."

"How long?"

"Until it doesn't work anymore."

Shadows drape my sight. I've missed the sunset and the russet color I love, but for the first time I don't miss it. "Prim," I say slowly, "You need to believe me. Trust me to figure this out. Don't give up. Okay?"

She nods. And looks assured. She scoots back to Rue and curls up by her side. They look like two pill bugs.

Meanwhile, I am less sure than ever. I'd mainly said what I did to forestall her worry. Panic worms through my gut. What the hell am I doing, exactly?

My fingers brush my pack, where the poisoned loaf of bread sits, wrapped and possibly soggy. And I wonder how much agony Glimmer died in. If I get the choice, I'd like to take the path less painful.

Say my insane plan works and it's down to Prim and Rue at the end. By now it's clear they'll refuse to harm each other, leaving the Gamemakers to resort to their own means of deciding a winner, a method that, if not precise, could potentially destroy them both. And which outcome would be worse for them?

There's never been two Victors.

_And there's never been none_.

I think I actually fall asleep. There's that vague fog through which time slips indiscriminately.

Some time later, a hand shakes me awake. "Peeta, wake up," says Rue.

I'm alert. "What is it?"

"There was a noise," she says, "a kind of howl. Like wolves."

Wolves. Something new to the arena, or we'd have heard the sound before. The night is still for a moment, then howls pierce the quiet.

I remember the wound in Thresh's throat. My hand finds my knife and brass knuckles. Sitting up, I rub at my face and peer through the dark. Dried mud cracks on my skin.

Whooooo.

Something's off about the howl. I mean, I've never seen or heard a wolf, but I've been told you can hear them in the Seam where the fences are close enough that the sound carries. When I was little, sometimes the Seam kids would mimic the noise in the schoolyard. That's what this sounds like, a human imitation of how a howl should sound.

The ground in front of us is wide and flat. No dark shapes grace the ridge yet, but my money isn't on the Gamemakers sending in mutts only to frighten us from afar.

The further into the Games we get, and the fewer tributes are left, the slower things get. Invariably it gets too slow.

Staying here isn't wise. We pick ourselves up and trudge forward. The area is familiar, and I realize with a start that the Cornucopia lies in the next field over. The treeline is a dark, distant line.

Another sound reaches us, not a howl. A girl's scream. In the night air, the shriek is unreal.

Freezing in the grass, we swivel around in the general direction and wait for the cannon boom, but nothing happens. The screams fades to awful whimpers of pain, then subside completely. Prim and Rue's eyes are as large as saucers. Mine must be too. No cannon.

_Die already_, I think.

"Let's just...mosey on," I mutter.

As I say it, I have the sinking feeling that won't happen. Leaving either Clove or Wynne to their own comeuppance would inspire approximately zero shame in me but if that cannon doesn't go off, none of us will feel safe.

Irritated, I sigh and throw up my hands.

"I'm going to see what's going on," I say. "You two get to those trees."

Rue says flatly, "That's stupid." Prim raises her eyebrows in agreement.

"Okay," I say, "You go see what's going on and I'll climb a tree."

Rue scrunches her face at the sarcasm. "How about nobody sees what's going on and everybody climbs a tree?"

"Then who is going to see what's going on?"

"Nobody who's gonna get eaten," says Prim.

"It can't have been mutts," I say. "It wouldn't take so long. We'd have heard the cannon go off."

"Oh that's good, it's just something else that could kill you."

I can't believe I'm arguing with two twelve-year-olds. Was there some sass elective in school I wasn't aware of? Both of them have their hands on their hips. Where do girls _learn_ that? "I just remembered something," I say like a light bulb went off.

"What?" they ask together.

"_I'm the grownup_. Go climb a tree. I'll be right there."

They share a glance and simultaneously shake their heads in tween exasperation. "You're a kid too, or you wouldn't be here," says Prim.

Startled, I almost look over my shoulder for the cameras I know are invisible.

I'm a kid, too, and that's why I'm here.

Neither are aware of how stunning those words are. Does she realize what she just said? That's as brazen a thing as has ever been heard in the arena, and it was said so offhandedly. Maybe the Capitol audience realizes that what they forget, take for granted—that we're children—is a grim reality that we're resigned to in the districts.

Or, you know, I'm only projecting the shame they should be feeling onto people who still don't, won't, give a shit, ever.

"Whatever. So I'm just a _big_ kid. Gooooo." I flap my hands at them. "Shoo, brats."

I say it without any rancor. Rue and Prim hesitate, then throw their arms around me briefly before fleeing through the grass, aiming for the distant treeline.

There's no time to waste so I don't pause before moving in a different direction, toward the scream. Tall grass brushes my chest. This time, it's a dry sea I'm wading through.

I hear her before I see her. Wynne's back is to me, her red hair glinting even in this low light, and she's hissing her breath through gritted teeth, trying to stay quiet and unnoticed. Maneuvering, I see that her foot is caught in a large and very nasty steel trap. The knots and clever camouflage clearly tell Lanka's handiwork—I can't see Wynne falling for anything amateur—but I don't recall her saying anything about setting a trap so close to the Cornucopia.

Well, duh. Of course she wouldn't have told us about _every_ trap. She would have kept a few in reserve as wicked surprises when our alliance had run its course. Out of reflex I jump and search the shadowy ground for any trip wires. Lanka would be clever enough to set one trap very near another.

District 5 does not know I'm here. I'm about to retrace my steps. Sorry, Wynne, but you are not even on the shortlist of my sympathies. I won't kill her myself—something bothers me about the idea of taking out somebody in that state—but I can live with walking away. Now that I've seen, I can go back to the trees.

"God, you are so predictable, Mellark," says Clove from behind me.

I whirl around. She's standing with her hip cocked, and I wonder why none of the Careers is ever good at sneaking up on a target. They love fanfare in everything they do; I guess that includes entering a fight.

Does she think I was about to help the girl from District 5? Going by her exaggerated eye roll, that would be a yes.

She tilts her head toward Wynne, who has heard us and is waiting in frozen anticipation, blue eyes wide. "Didn't know about that one," Clove says, referencing the steel trap. "Though I figured there'd be one she 'forgot' to tell us about."

A lingering familiarity from our brief time as allies is weirding me out. For an instant it almost feels like we're still on the same team.

Then she shakes her head and takes out a knife. One knife that I can see, which means there are probably several more I don't see.

"Where're your kids?" she asks, smiling.

I don't answer. Her smile sours.

"Unbelievable," scoffs Clove. "You realize you'll have to choose between them eventually, don't you? Or are you so desperate to die for somebody that you don't care who?"

Her insinuation that I'm just addictively self-sacrificing nettles me. If the Capitol paints me as having some martyr complex, it undermines everything I'm trying to do.

Without my really being aware of it, this has turned from some harebrained plan to save the little sister of the girl I love into a greater, nebulous plot I can't really define. The majority of my moves now are motivated by conscience as much as by the needs of the moment. Meaning: morally, decisively, I'm pretty much winging it now.

"I don't want to die," I tell Clove, and I mean it.

"You're going to."

"I know."

For some reason this answer irritates her. "Superior ass," she says. "You think you're so much better than us."

On the ground, Wynne looks caught between relief at being ignored and annoyance that we're carrying on a conversation while she lingers with a foot caught in the trap.

Clove moves like she's about to come closer. Abruptly we're interrupted. The brassy Panem march that we've set our clocks by blares once again. Annoyance makes all three of us frown, uniting us for a fraction of a second. The Capitol manages to butt in on everything.

In the sky, Thresh's face is projected, an image slightly misted by clouds. I stare up at him, and remember our lunch, and his warning—both back in training and just recently, in the swamp that the flood had made of the forest.

Looking up, I hold my fingers in the goodbye salute of my district.

"See you soon," I say softly. Neither Clove nor Wynne can hear it. _Save a place at the table for me._

Clove's expression once his image fades is curious. "How'd you do it?" she asks. "Can't see you outfighting _him_."

I don't respond, tired of the bravado. Thresh's death is one I won't crow over.

_Whoooo_. This time, the howling is more insistent. And unless it's my imagination, closer too.

Clove sways uncertainly. She wants to finish me, I can see it. Practicality wins over bloodlust. "Guess I'll just leave you for the mutts," she says. "More targets that aren't me." She smiles. Never before have I met a girl whose smiles I hated. "I think I'll go find your little fans."

She takes off trotting through the tall grass. Darkness envelopes her back. I don't make a move to stop her, though I'm beyond aggravated by the runaround. Fights just do not ever finish here.

"Aren't you going after her?" Wynne says. Irony soaks her words.

"She's running in the wrong direction," I answer, amused.

Turning toward Wynne, I see she's actually managed to get the trap open by screwing it apart with a knife. Her leg is clearly broken. Mutts, mutts, mutts, I think. She will not get far.

Wynne stands gingerly, then buckles. "I can't walk, much less run."

She sinks back down to the ground and stares up. Howls split the air. Her eyes are wide in fright, but she's maintaining control. I swing around to scan the field, squinting through the tall grass. Wind is riffling through it, making it difficult to really track movement.

"I'm going to die soon," murmurs Wynne.

She's right. Not even I could circumvent this. I'm still gazing through the field. I need to _run_.

"Were you going to leave me in the trap?" she asks.

"Yes," I say.

She's looking at me now. "So that was the noblest option, huh?"

Her too? Everybody's giving me grief. "Actually, yeah."

Wynne's smile is wry. "Aren't you the hero." She's managing the pain well. I don't know how calm I'd be if my foot had been caught in a steel trap. Her smile falters.

"I have to go," I say. Another minute could be my last.

"Give me some of that bread." Wynne stretches her hand out.

I should be surprised she knows about it, but I'm not. She must be up on everybody's business; she was skulking around successfully enough. I kneel, sling my pack down and unpack the bread. It's a little stale but not as stale as the leftovers we eat at home. I tear off a chunk that has a dense cluster of the nightlock berries.

She takes it slowly.

"Do you want me to stay?" I ask.

Turning the piece over in her hands, she considers this. "Would it freak you out?"

"Uh, yeah. Everything about this place freaks me out." But I offer her a companionable, 'can-you-believe-this-shit' grin. "But this is a weird time for you to get selfless about it."

She laughs. However calculating and circumstantially ruthless she is, she knows when to laugh. "Yeah. Stay."

I sit down next to her. She thinks for a moment. "What should my last words be?"

"What have you always wanted to say?"

Wynne's mouth quirks in a smile. She looks around, unbothered by the howls. When she talks, she raises her voice for the mutts, for Panem, for her.

"Fuck you, Capitol." The words are loud and clear.

She pops the bread into her mouth. The effect is quick and she dies more quickly than any other means by which she could expect to meet her end.

I stand, and run in an ungainly fashion through the tall grass. Have I wasted too much time? In this sea of grass, anything can hide.

…..

It's the mockingjays that warn me. Their calls suddenly erupt in a flurry of shrieks and I see a cloud of them lifting from the trees where I'd been heading. Then those unearthly yelps sound again, and this time they're in front of me.

Skidding to a halt, I try to listen over my labored breathing. Nothing. But I know they're circling; they've cut me off from the treeline. The girls must have made it because I've heard no cries or cannons. Too much time has elapsed, though, for me to follow them.

I turn back, hobbling in double-time. The mutts' howling rises in a twisted symphony, like the Capitol had deliberately set out to create a monster that was the very opposite of mockingjays and their pretty songs. It's at my back and now fear propels me faster than I could run on my own. Where am I going? _Think,_ Peeta.

The cliff. If I can't go up, I'll have to climb down. If I make it there on time.

From the far side of the field, I hear more wild cries, and I can't tell if it's me they're tracking, or Clove. Or if they found Wynne's body before the hovercraft got to her. I haven't seen it.

Sweat drenches my face. School gym didn't prepare me for this. My chest is heaving for air that I don't have the time to stop and supply. My thigh is aching so badly. Still I run.

I almost run off the cliff before I see it. "Aaah!" I yell, and windmill my arms as I pitch forward dangerously. The vertical rise hadn't seemed so high or steep when we climbed it a couple of hours before, but now the drop seems awfully long. Moonlight makes the surface of the water below glimmer. The forest is as flooded as it was when we'd escaped it.

Glancing over my shoulder, I have just enough time to spot the glowing pair of eyes and gleaming teeth before a huge shadow launches itself at me.

I shout in surprise and instinctively duck. The mutt sails over my head and past the cliff's edge. There is a moment of suspension before I hear it hit the water. What the hell was that thing? I'm pretty sure it's wolflike, because it bears a lot of similarity to the textbook drawings they scare the little kids with in class to keep them away from the fences, but it's different, too: huge and freakish and I could have sworn it'd been running on its back legs.

Several more sets of eyes seem to float through the dark, until their silhouettes are resolved by the moon. I realize their eyes lack the animal gleam of the cats and dogs I've seen, that weird green mirror that reflects light in nighttime. I don't waste time wondering.

Turning, I gracelessly tumble off the edge of the rise and frantically slide a few feet when a hairy muzzle pops into view above me. It's so close and I almost lose my grip on the rock out of fright. It yowls and this time there is no denying how very human it sounds.

Mutts are created by fusing two creatures that were never meant to cross paths. What in hell had they combined these with? I shimmy further down, still keeping my face toward the cliff edge where several more snarling mouths have joined the first.

I'm halfway down when I hear thrashing below me. I look down and the sight of the first mutt churning the water, damaged by the fall but still angry and dangerous, sends me back up a foot before I freeze to the rocky face. Mutts above me and one below.

I struggle to catch my breath. I'm stuck. And the mutts are beginning to navigate from the top, finding footholds with dexterity that is not natural to any animal.

"Shit, shit," I pant. Keep it together.

With my face pressed close to the rocks I ease down until my feet are only just beyond the bottom mutt's leaping range, hindered by what I now see are broken hindquarters. The mutts topside are making their way down, landing rock to rock like freaky billy goats.

I take a knife from my pocket, one of a couple I have now. My brass knuckles are still on my right hand. Reaching out with a shaking grip on the rock, I dangle the knife by the hilt with my thumb and forefinger, aim and drop the knife. It sails down point-first and strikes the mutt below squarely between the eyes, and it goes down with a splash. One in a million shot. I won't get that lucky again.

No time to think. I glance upward and jerk my face back as a vicious cavern of serrated teeth almost takes off my nose.

I shout and snap my fist up in reflex. The brass knuckles connect with the mutt's jaw and knocks it off balance, and its claws scrabble as it tumbles from the rock. Its bulk catches me as it falls and takes me down with it.

We hit the water together, me on my back and the mutt in a tangled frenzy of limbs. The water is still high, nearly four-and-a-half feet, and I sink to the muddy bottom before I regain my footing.

The mutt twists and howls but I have just a second while it's righting itself. Gagging on the muck I'd swallowed, I rush heavily in the high water to the nearest tree, moving ridiculously slow. God, I wish I could swim.

I'm nearly there when I hear several loud splashes and know without looking back that they have all plopped into the water behind me. Some of the resulting howls are laced with pain. In their eagerness to reach me, they leaped from too high up.

Not all of them. I've got a grip on the first branch of a tree and am hoisting myself up when a powerful vise locks around my leg. I scream. The pain is so much worse than anything yet, and I feel the terrible sensation of the teeth ripping deep and _pulling_.

I thrust another knife with little direction. It only catches the thing by its head but takes the ear off, and I slam the knuckles into its snout. It's enough to loosen the grip, although the teeth drag along my skin as I yank my leg up.

Blinding pain makes my head spin and somebody else's willpower wills my hand to keep its grip. I don't know how I make it up another several feet; somehow I'm moving outside of myself. That's the only thing I can think of. One more branch. Move move MOVE!

I climb until I run out of tree. Thank God I'd had my crash course in tree-climbing with Rue. Blood pours from my leg, which is completely mangled but it's a gaping maw above my knee that's the worst and I stuff my hands over it in a futile effort to stem the flow of blood. I pull the kerchief from my neck and wrap it clumsily around the wound. It doesn't work. I re-wrap it and tie it so tightly I immediately lose most of the sensation from my toes to the knee.

Now I'm really regretting I didn't hang out at the healer's booth. The mutts that made the fall mostly uninjured paddle closer, cutting through the water with a jerky sort of grace and using their back legs to launch forward. I'm furious these monsters can swim.

They begin leaping up out of the water with unnerving power, bunching their hindquarters and exploding upwards. I'm only just above their snapping range.

After a few frustrated attempts they stall and I'm shocked at the intelligence with which they seem to be considering their next attack. That's something close to _awareness_ in their faces. Never has the Capitol ventured so far into this territory of manipulation.

Now that I'm getting a good look at them, they seem even more wrong. That's what Thresh called them: wrong.

Each one is different, I see. One is huge and hulking with rolling blue eyes; another has curly light hair and green irises. Still more have varying patterns and coloring, representing the variety you find in humans.

In humans.

Oh my God.

"Are those their eyes?" I gasp in horror.

They didn't gleam in the night, as animals' do.

The Capitol didn't only cross the line, they obliterated it.

I sway in place. I'd have thought nothing the Capitol could do would shake me anymore, not after what we've seen from them in previous Games, but these creatures inspire a dread unlike anything I've felt. Do they feel this way in the Capitol audience? Unbelievable.

There are maybe a dozen in all. Too many for me to even think about taking on, even with half of them injured. My leg is a ticking clock, too. I learned enough at school to know that I've got hours left before it's toast.

Treed. Like one of Katniss's damned squirrels. I don't know how long I sit there.

How much time do I have before the Gamemakers tire of this standoff and renew the rain, or strike the tree with lighting, whatever they want to grease the wheels? Unless it's my imagination, the night sky is beginning to be infused with a morning glow.

"I could use some help!" I shout. "And no more bread."

A movement above catches my notice, and I watch the silver parachute float with precision and land on the branch next to me. Its silk snags on the foliage. The container is far too small to hold a weapon, and my stomach sinks but I reach for it anyway. The muttations yowl wildly, hindered to distraction because they can't get to me, and I have to do my best to ignore the sea of teeth and claws below.

Leaning forward, I stretch out and manage to hook a finger through one of the parachute strings and draw it back. I twist the top open and expect some sick joke, like more nightlock berries or something else to commit suicide with.

Instead I see a little silver flute, sitting primly in paper wrapping. I pick it up and hold it to the night. What moonlight that can filter through the tree branches gives it a muted shine.

It's a whistle. I've seen the Peacekeepers at home wearing these, although we don't give them a lot of reasons to use them. Mostly they just blow them on Reaping Day to get the kids organized in their rows. This whistle doesn't quite look the same; it's longer and thinner, almost dainty.

What the hell is this supposed to do? Lull the beasts to sleep? Experimentally, I raise it to my lips and blow through it.

No sound. Flummoxed, I stare at the thing.

A dissonance of startled yelps explodes from beneath my fragile perch. The mutts writhe crazily for a second, then the effect passes and they resume glaring at me with a new wariness.

"..." I blow the whistle again. I hear nothing. Again the mutts are sent into a feral cacophony, and even retreat a few feet.

_Huh._

A dog whistle. I grin crazily. Haymitch, you magnificent sodden drunk. How did you even get this?

This time I whistle to the tune of that ridiculous Panem march, or I imagine I am as it's soundless to me, and the mutts react to it with a hatred that almost makes me laugh. Yeah, the rest of us hate it too. They back up, unable to bear whatever it is they hear. Their reactions are stronger than those of the Peacekeeper's dogs I've seen respond to the same thing. I keep whistling. They keep backpedaling.

Eventually they're forced back to a distance and I begin to wonder if I can shimmy down the tree and get back to the rise.

I have to chance it. Hours, I remind myself. Now that I can mark a deadline I'm feeling amazingly focused. I have this much time, and this much to do. First, I have to get out of this tree.

Gingerly, I let myself down, keeping the whistle in my mouth and blowing the entire time. I clamp down with my teeth to make sure it doesn't go anywhere. The mutts dart forward and stop; I whistle until my ears are red from the effort and it beats them back.

Just a short time ago I was frustrated by how slow the water made me; now I'm glad for it, because it eases the weight in my leg. Whistle. Breath. Whistle. The mutts strain at the boundaries of their tolerance. Will they get used to it? They still cringe and bare their teeth, those wicked fangs. Whenever I have to take a breath, they jerk forward a foot and lose their ground once I exhale again.

With my face to them, I grope behind me until I reach the rocky wall. If it had been difficult to climb before, it's a mountain now. My leg is near useless, my thigh is inflamed and the cuts on my shoulder and head are banging drums. I have to continue blowing the whistle over my shoulder, reaching blindly for each handhold.

At last I'm far up enough that they can't reach, and I'm able to stop whistling so that I can save my breath for climbing. Released from the sound, the mutts race to the base of the wall and scrabble at the rock. Some of them launch high enough that I give a few more whistles for good measure.

Finally I make it to the top and collapse much as I had not hours before. With my face in the mud, I laugh right into it, the relieved laughter of the timely spared. I make myself roll over, keeping a careful hold on the whistle, and lean forward just to make sure their bizarre physiques aren't mutated enough to let them climb. They're not.

"Sit," I say over the edge, "roll over. Good boy."

Yeah, I know. But like I said, I get weirdly slaphappy when I'm scared out of my mind. And the scare I just had would be enough to make anybody giddy.

Or maybe it's the blood loss. I look down and see the tourniquet has loosened and blood's creeping out. For the third time, I wind the kerchief around the leg and draw it so tight I can almost feel my toes pop.

"Peeta!" I swing around and see Prim running towards me. "Are you okay?"

"What are you doing out of the trees?" I demand.

"It's been two hours since we saw you," she says, wide-eyed. Did that much time really pass? "We've been looking for you. Rue's going to meet me back at the Cornucopia."

Not a bad place to run to, I figure. The smooth, sloped sides would make it difficult for the mutts to get at them. Prim pales at hearing the howls below and shrinks back. I blow a few more whistles at them for good measure, but we're far up enough now that it's only a severe irritation to their ears.

When she sees my leg, Prim dashes forward. Evidently the knots I'd made are about as crappy as I suspected, because she's unwound it and tied it again with practiced precision in no time at all.

"Thanks," I say.

"How'd you even climb up like that?"

Honest to God, I have no idea. "Haymitch sent me wings."

"He must have kept the halo."

I laugh at the sky, leaning back on my elbows. At most we're hours away from the end of this all, we're filthy and tired and I'm bloody and Clove's still alive and I laugh. Prim giggles too. She gets embarrassed whenever she makes jokes.

"Can you walk?" she asks as I try to stand.

The answer is no. Standing is enough of a trial. Maybe if somebody lit a fire under the seat of my pants it would be enough to get me moving, but I'd doused the last fire with a little silver whistle and I'm waiting on the next.

I close my eyes, only a moment. "Just give me a minute or two," I say.

Prim says that's okay and sits beside me. She pats my arm. She's just as protective as her sister, but it shows differently. After a moment she whispers, "Peeta, what are we going to do?"

I don't answer, because I'm thinking, and behind my eyelids whiz a hundred different possibilities. None of them end well. Rue and Prim. Prim and Rue. Two twelve-year-olds, standing together at the end, but there's no real end until one of them meets it. Both girls beloved by the audience. Even now, I can't begin to accept that one of them must die.

In the short fragment of time they've been allowed, they've formed a bond that my brothers and I didn't manage over sixteen years. I can't say what prevented Glennan, Pace and I from being truly close. Like Katniss and Prim. It can't just be a sister thing; I've seen Hawthorne fuss over his brother the same way.

I'm jealous of them. The Mellarks are like some ill-fitting puzzle where all the pieces are jammed into their spots but don't ever feel like they belong there.

Prim tucks her hand beneath her head. What would Katniss do? Something daring. She'd find a way to circumvent the rules, just as she's done the past four years. If there's anyone who knows their way around an impossible situation, it's her. I can't think of anybody else that could have picked up the pieces of a life the way she did. I'm just the baker's kid, and I am so way in over my head.

My minute or two is up. I push myself to my feet and examine my leg. Still busted.

"Looks nasty."

I look over to where the grass begins, and I straighten up. "We should stop meeting like this."

Clove is framed by the tall grass. It's an appropriately dramatic entrance for a Career. "I agree," she says. A knife gleams in her hand. "Actually I think we should just stop meeting at all."


	5. Chapter 5

n: epilogue to follow shortly.

...

...

We're both tired. Most of our energy is shot. Clove looks nowhere near as bad off as I am, but her composure can't hide the skin still flush from running, or the strands of hair that have escaped the braid woven tightly into her scalp. And her face is still bruised from the elbow I'd tossed earlier. I hold a knife too. For all the wicked variety of weapons the Cornucopia offered, it's knives in their simple basic cruelty we always turn back to.

There's a sense of finality about this moment. I know that this time, we'll finish the fight one way or another. No last second interruptions.

Prim backs up but doesn't bolt. If she did, Clove would waste no time at all in proving her deadly aim. She'd done so with Axel.

"Thanks for taking out the mutts," she smiles conversationally.

"Nothing more undignified than dying as a giant chew toy," I say.

Clove looks thoughtful. "I could think of something."

The casual way she says it, devoid of any swagger, unsettles me more than if she'd been boasting. "How are you guys even real?" I demand of her, and the Careers, and everybody in the first, second, and fourth districts. "How does a district just...roll you off the factory lines? You're like cartoons."

Her brows furrow; she doesn't understand. "What the hell are you talking about, Mellark?"

"I don't _get_ it. Do they just like, breed a mean streak in you guys?" I seriously cannot comprehend them. Everything to them is a multiple choice question where the decent thing isn't even one of the options. The idea that there are entire Districts of Cloves and Scalons and Glimmers and Marvels boggles me.

At the bottom of the rock face, the mutts are howling psychotically. "SHUT UP!" Clove and I yell in unison at them.

She wheels around to me, irritated. "You are such a sanctimonious brat," she sneers. "Like you don't play people like a harp. So what? A bleeding heart just gets you a bleeding heart."

In a nut shell, the doctrine of every tribute of District 2 before her. If I'd been born and raised there, would I still be me? Or, imprinted from birth, a mindlessly violent Career?

_But you were a Career_, a voice reminds me, and I feel hollow, because I know I am as capable of savagery and deceit as any one of them, whatever my good intentions are. Maybe I'm better at it. And I'm not sorry. I don't feel regret over what I did, and that's what I regret. All we have to choose from in this place are the least of many evils.

Done philosophizing, Clove advances with her weapon.

I motion Prim away, and she darts back. If this goes south, she'll have room to run. And let's be real, this will probably go south. My leg will not hold out. Maybe I can take her down with me.

Almost experimentally, Clove tosses a knife at my head. I duck instinctively and so does Prim, although she's well back and not in the line of fire.

"Between the two of you you might be half a match for me," she grins.

Clove changes momentum so fast I can't think before she's a step away. This time she doesn't slash at my face, but crouches and springs for my knees and I'm so drained I can't dodge speedily enough.

Instead I only manage to twist a little and I'm knocked to the ground, and she's crouched over me and I jerk my head as the knife comes down. It grazes my head but doesn't make a cut; she yanks up the knife to bring it down again and I sucker punch her in the nose. Blood flows from her nose and I slam the heel of my palm into her diaphragm the way Marvel had done to me. I can't get my arm back far enough to pack much force but it still takes her breath, and I shove her away, rolling before she can stick a blade in my ribs.

I spring to my feet without any grace. My busted leg is insistently reminding me of what a busted leg it is by shooting hot needles of pain through the thigh. Below the tourniquet, it feels worryingly numb, and the knee won't bend. Dimly, I hear Prim in the background.

Clove finds her footing with about as much agility as I had. Although I'd gotten in a good shot, I'm faring the worst of it as my mobility is close to non-existent. She is afforded the luxury of regaining her breath at a short distance. With the back of her wrist, she touches it to the base of her nose to stem the bleeding.

"Didn't anybody tell you that you shouldn't hit a girl?" she snarls through her hand.

I groan. Every damn Games. Every single one, somebody makes that joke with almost no variation. It's practically requisite now. I think the Capitol audience loves hearing it. There's not a lot that annoys me more than a joke knowingly recycled.

Prim's been hovering at a greater distance, far enough that she'd get a head start on Clove but close enough to be a spectator. "Get her, Peeta!" she calls.

"You better scram, once I finish him you're next," Clove barks at her. "I like a chase."

I throw a rock at her head, and she turns her attention to me just in time to duck.

"Nice try—" she begins to say, but I interrupt her.

"MUTT!" I yell at the top of my lungs, fixing a pointed finger and a wide-eyed glance over her shoulder, and Clove spins around. I throw a knife at her head. It lodges inexpertly in her arm and she makes a furious strangled noise and pulls it out.

"You are _dead_. YOU'RE DEAD!" Her face is contorted with fury. With her good arm, she flexes, more of a twitch really, and a knife comes sailing out of her hand. I dodge it, but I twist right into the path of the second knife that she whips lightning-quick after the first. Had this been the first day, when she was rested and fed and ready, that knife would have taken me through the chest. But we're nearly at the end and she's tired and hungry and her aim falters just enough that the steel catches my bicep and nothing more.

Still, the pain is terrible and I'm running low on endurance. We're just going to exchange blows until one of us is finally too exhausted to go on. By the look of it, that one will be me.

Clove isn't smiling anymore. Her teeth are bared like one of the mutts, and I see a glimpse of that deranged girl I suspected was lurking under the cool facade. "Just die. _Why won't you die?_" She actually stomps a foot in rage.

"If you had better aim this wouldn't be a problem," I pant.

Without us noticing, morning has stolen away the night, and the sky is a luminous pale shade. It comes as a surprise; in a way, you expect it to go on being night for as long as the horrors last. Dawn washes over us in dull yellow tones. Clove's face is thrown into sharp contrast.

She stoops to retrieve the knife I'd thrown, revealing the grass behind her, wafting in an early wind.

Her back is to the grass; mine is to the cliff. I stare at her, and beyond her. My fingers reach for and curl around the little silver flute.

She raises her blade. I raise my whistle.

"That won't help," says Clove.

"It won't help you," I say.

The mutt leaps from the grass.

It lands bodily on Clove, tearing at her with teeth and claws. She screams and thrashes with her knife. It glances off the mutt's back, snagging on the thick, curly hair. I stagger back at the shocking ferocity with which it attacks her, a whirlwind of hair and howls and jaws. Blood. She fights back but the wolf is driven by a mad energy.

"Help me," she cries, and I don't move; I only stare transfixed. "Please, oh please help me." She finally sounds her age. Like the scared kid the rest of us are.

No. See, Clove? I'm not so desperate to die for somebody that I'd let it be you.

Clove thrusts the knife into its neck, burying it to the hilt, and the mutt shrieks, and with what seems like a huge, final effort, lunges and snaps at her head with its teeth, sinking them into the crook of her neck, flooding their faces with red.

Clove screams, the mutt bays, and the two of them sag at once, and breathe their last together.

The mutt falls to the side, a hulking mass in the early dawn.

_Boom_, goes the cannon.

It happened so quickly.

I scan the grass, breathing hard, but I don't see any more mutts. This one was a loner. I lower the whistle.

Prim and I are quiet. I turn and see she's crying, and I'm so desperately grateful that she can still cry for Clove, because I can't. It's fitting that those two died together, comrades in horror.

Taking a closer look, I see the muttation had sandy, curly hair, and its open vacant eyes are a clear blue. It's smaller than the others had been, with smoother features. In death, it appears almost passive, and the resemblance it bears to Axel is unmistakable. He'd been a loner too. Clove had killed him with a knife in the back.

"Let's move," I say to Prim.

"Will there be more—more of them?" she asks in a wavering voice.

Enough tributes have died that there certainly could be more, but I don't expect we'll see them. If any remain in the arena, the Gamemakers will flick whatever homing instinct they've installed in the beasts and recall them.

I know why. Because this final three is the most exciting finale they've seen in a long time, maybe ever. No alliance has ever held this tightly; normally they have fallen apart by this point or long before. The Gamemakers don't want anything taking us out other than each other.

They don't get it yet.

We move a little ways away, far enough that the hovercraft descends from nowhere and retrieves the body of District 2's last tribute. Then we stop so I can rest and get my bearings.

It is day. The sky is a clear expanse, hardly any clouds except for a couple of picturesque puffs of white here and there. The grass no longer seems foreboding; now it sways in a breeze, almost friendly.

I know it's time.

Part of me—most, all—wants to drag this time out. Enjoy a moment or two of peace. We've earned it. But I know that the clock is still ticking, even though the dangers aren't as apparent: the longer we dawdle, the sooner the Gamemakers will really understand this unity between us won't collapse, and they'll do something to drive a wedge again.

Because I know what many of them are thinking now: _Smart boy. He preserved the two girls so that when all the serious competition had fallen, all he'd be left to contend with would be them._ Even in my state, neither girl would be a match for me.

Seeing Clove and Axel's ghost die together resolved an idea in my head that had only been misty speculation when I'd worried on the ridge top or in the trees. Neither of them won; both lost. I know what to do.

I need to make this fast. No time to see Rue first.

It speaks to Prim's character that she does not even flinch when I pull the knife from my belt, and she watches me toss it aside like she'd expected nothing else.

I should be euphoric. All I feel is tired. Every thing I've done since getting dropped in this godforsaken place has been out of the marginal hope that through luck, lying, and timely interventions I could get to this point, where the outcome is utterly in my control. Now that hope has materialized. Wonderful.

"So now what?" Prim says to me, all big eyes. "We have to...do something. Your leg needs help."

She glances at the tourniquet on my leg, worried. Being the little healer she is, I don't doubt that it's a serious concern.

"I'm not worried about it," I say.

Prim searches my face. "We won't hurt each other. We won't. Couldn't they have three winners? Wouldn't that be okay?"

No, I think. And the fearful set of her brows belies her own words. She's too old to really believe them and young enough that she's hopeful anyway.

I stare her right in the eye like the good liar I am and I say, "Remember I told you to trust me? I said I'd figure it all out. Do you believe that?"

Prim nods.

"Everything is going to be okay," I say. I put my hand on her shoulder. "I promise."

"Okay," she whispers.

"But you have to promise something too. You have to do exactly what I tell you. No matter how crazy it sounds. Do you swear?"

Prim looks scared but she dips her chin minutely, yes. "I swear."

I take out my canteen and pour all the water on the ground. It pools and I kneel gingerly, awkward leg stuck out, to stir up the dirt into mud. Prim furrows her brows but doesn't question me as I take the needle, the one that ended Thresh's life, and dip it into the mud. Then I unfold the paper in which my lifesaving whistle had been wrapped. Using the needle as a pen, I scribble some words in muddy ink.

It takes a minute because there's a reason we don't use mud to write. It dries on the paper too quickly and I have to swirl the needle in the mud every few seconds. I cup my hand so that the cameras don't see.

Struggling up, I hand her the scrap of paper, folded now. "Don't read that yet. Find Rue first." And then I hold out the loaf of bread.

She stares. "Isn't that poisoned?"

"It is," I affirm.

"Why are you giving it to me?"

"It's part of the plan," I say. "It's all there on that scrap. But wait for Rue before you read it, okay? Trust me."

Again, Prim nods and takes the bread, and I am awed by her faith in me.

I want to say something, anything, to tell her what a great kid she is and how lucky Katniss is to have her for a sister. How I'm glad that it turned out this way. I want to ask her to give Katniss my love. But I can say none of these things to that perceptive little kid, because she will see right through them. So instead:

"Go get Rue. I'll catch up," I say to Prim. Big blue eyes stare at me to detect a lie. "Really. I'm just going to make sure the mutts are gone. And take this."

I drop the silver whistle into her hand. Just in case.

She hesitates, then leans up and gives me a peck on the cheek. Only then does she gather up the wrapped loaf and vanish around the corner, blonde braid flying. Heading to Rue.

I wait until I think she's out of earshot.

Raising my head to the sky, I say in a normal tone knowing full well they'll hear it in the crowds: "If you had to choose, Panem, would you rather have two Victors or none at all?"

Let them chew on that. They don't know what I wrote. It is such a gamble, but it's the only way.

I stand there a few minutes. Revel in the feeling of finally, finally being alone. Even with the cameras trained on me, I can ignore them. They don't exist. A breeze riffles the plains grass. Some mockingjays trill. I whistle, and they flit closer, echoing my note.

I whistle Rue's tune. Safe and sound. I hope. If not, if this doesn't work, this will all be for nothing. The song flows through the trees. For whatever reason, the mockingjays take to it and sing repeatedly.

Is there really so much of this? Of trees, and sky, and hills, rolling beyond sight? Lakes that sit untouched? Or are pockets of land like these the rare few patches that have escaped the _cosmetic_ alterations? How much of the country has been riddled for the Games? Somehow, standing in this place, I have the feeling that most of Panem goes on and on like this. Creeks and birds and meadows. Life.

It's weird. Like I'm seeing Panem at Beauty Base Zero. But it's also comforting.

I'm ready. My hand doesn't shake as it moves down to the tourniquet Prim tied so expertly. It's tied too well to undo with my fingers. With my knife I make short work of the kerchief that's keeping me here.

Blood spills, faster than I thought. It's so quick. That's better, right? It runs down my leg in a river, rushing to reach the ground.

I sit down, hard. The grass is soft.

Drawing up my knees, I lean forward and put my head in my hands. And wait.

The asking price was more than I could pay. The real cost for the districts is not the tributes we lose, but the Victors we are left with. They are the mortgages that the Capitol levies on our souls. In that way, then, District 12 has paid the least of anyone, although we've suffered the worst. Victors, I realize foggily, are the real losers in this place.

"Peeta!"

Oh no.

She's standing there with a thunderstruck face, and I feel absurdly guilty for getting caught in the act. Prim races over and yanks her own handkerchief from her belt and tries to tie it around my leg again. I still have the strength to stop her.

"Please, Peeta," she cries, struggling to pry my fingers away.

My throat's thick as I shake my head. If I start to talk I know I'll break down and cry.

She looks so _betrayed_. More so, I suspect, than when it seemed I'd joined the Careers. I can't look at her, because the sight of her stricken face will dissolve my composure. I don't want to die and more than anything I don't want to die with her hating me.

"Why?" she wails.

Why indeed. Coming from her, it's such a loaded question. _Why_, Panem?

"I would so much rather die than live with anything the Capitol could make me do," I say.

She sits on her knees with a twisted face. I need her to understand what I'm doing. Why I'm doing it. Please, Prim. Give me this, at least. I have nothing else. I bring up my gaze again to look her in the eyes. Slowly, she gives a minute nod. It takes everything she has.

Her eyes swim. I try to exhale and it comes out a sob. I can't stop the tears now. "I'm sorry," I apologize as I begin to lose it, and try to smile. "I'm just a little scared."

Prim begins to truly cry. Not the pinched, broken sounds she'd made in her little-girl effort to keep it together, but a full collapse. She rushes forward and throws her skinny arms around me. I'm starting to get so tired. I wrap my big baker's hands around her tiny back and cry into her shoulder.

There's so much I still wanted to do. I wanted kids, and family, and _someone_—who chose me, me above anyone else, who made the decision that I was someone worth dedicating something to. That's not selfish, is it? I wanted so badly to be worth something, but I'll never have the chance.

She starts patting my back. I almost laugh at the absurdity. I'm dying on her and this twelve-year-old, who I'm leaving to face the Capitol and all its dangers with nothing other than another child, is comforting me. Small hands stroke my hair, the way my dad did once when I was little and sick with flu.

"Promise you'll do what I said," I tell her. She hushes me and says she will.

It's hard to stay sitting. Prim lets me ease to the ground. She keeps petting my head. Amazingly, she's regaining control, although tears still stream down her cheeks. She starts humming something soft. I begin to feel better. Now she's singing quietly. I can't make out the words. Things are starting to fade. Colors dim and the sun isn't so bright now.

The feeling is like walking to some place you don't really want to be, and you drag your feet all the way but the walk goes too quickly all the same and you've got an appointment to keep and no matter which way your feet turn, you're there before you know it. I'd felt that way about school sometimes. Death: the eternal study hall.

I smile. I'd laugh if I still could.

Katniss, I'm sorry I never had the courage to talk to you. I wanted to, so badly. I want to tell you how I watched everyday for signs of the starving, desperate girl that gave up outside the baker's shop that day, and how I never saw her again. Only the determined, strong, fierce girl that replaced her. I know you'd be here if you could. I don't know that it would have made a difference if you were.

Maybe this will mean something. Maybe it won't. Years from now, maybe only Prim and Rue and Katniss and their mothers will remember what I did or care. I don't know if it will matter to anyone else.

My mind settles at last. No more plotting. Everything is done.

Through fading vision I see Prim kiss her fingers and hold her hand to me in the old salute of District 12. I want to return the sign but my fingers won't move.

Do they see?

Maybe it will matter to someone.

Maybe it


	6. Chapter 6

_Two girls run to each other in the plain where the Cornucopia lies. The look on the face of the girl from District 11 is frantic; the cannon has gone off and she doesn't know what it means. But when she sees the girl from 12, she knows._

_They clasp hands when they reach one another. Both are a wreck of emotion. Enraptured and devastated and bewildered, the Capitol audience watches from the grandstands/their living rooms, lavishly furnished/the town squares, baroque and crowded/the control room of the Gamemakers, where Plutarch Heavensbee begins to hope something, and does not regret the risk he took in sending the whistle Mellark's way._

_Primrose Everdeen—favored last in the betting pools—takes a slip of paper from her pocket and bends over it with Rue Garlander—favored second to last in the betting pools—to read. The audience realizes it is the scrap given to her by Peeta Mellark—favored seventh in the betting pools—and they wait with baited breath._

_Cameras strain to capture the girls' expressions, but they are carefully blank despite the tears. Their shoulders are frustratingly pressed together so that no lens can determine what is written on the paper. When they finish reading, the girl from 12 sets it afire and Mellark's last words are ashes scattered to the wind._

_The girls stand and stare at each other. One man in the Capitol crowd shouts for Rue Garlander to take the knife in her belt and claim her Victory. Everyone hushes him with a particularly odd vehemence and he sits down, face burning at a transgression he can't define. Rue does no such thing. She even wriggles the knife out and throws it to the side like the metal burns the touch._

_Primrose uncradles the poisoned bread and picks off the wrapping. Some of the audience make confused noises. She's aware of how deadly it is. Others are quick to understand, and the stands begin to fill with the sounds of their distress. Sharp intakes of breath and distraught cries are heard in varying pitches and shades of disbelief._

_The girl from 12 breaks off a chunk of the bread, darkened by a cluster of the nightlock berries, and hands the rest of it to Rue. Rue Garlander takes it without saying a word._

_From the grandstands/the living rooms/the town squares/the control room the audience shouts, "No, don't!" And from a private suite reserved for the President of Panem, "No" is said quietly and with fury._

"_No," is said from around Panem, invested in this outcome in a way they never were before. For the first time in anybody's memory they watch as intensely as the Capitol crowd does.  
><em>

"_Oh, no, no, no," says District 11, and Mrs Garlander in particular._

"_No, please no," says District 12, and Mrs Everdeen in particular._

_No no nononono thinks Katniss Everdeen, on her knees in tears, but a suspicion kindles in the back of her mind as well._

_Yes, thinks Haymitch._

_After joining hands, Rue and Primrose raise the bread to their mouths. And take a bite._

_A voice in the air shouts, "STOP! STOP!"_

_In the end, it is Claudius Templesmith who gets the last word. The girls spit out their deaths, and cling to each other as more words are heard and a hovercraft bears down from the sky._

_When he's asked, and he will be, Seneca Crane will uphold the ratings as his justification for sparing them both, and hope that President Snow will understand._

**Katniss**

They don't even give us a body to bury. We show up in a gray drizzle for a hovercraft that never comes. Instead a Peacekeeper, a new one I don't recognize, gives a transparently fake announcement that Peeta had expressed a wish in the Capitol to be cremated and spare his friends and family the grief of a burial.

Nobody buys the story, but I don't know why they're lying. Madge clarifies for me one day soon after, as we walk the path to the new Everdeen house in the Victors' Village.

"They don't want us turning his grave into a memorial," she says. We're in the only place we feel safe talking. When we reach the house, we will have to monitor our words. "They want him forgotten. That's why they won't even give us his ashes. They're afraid we'll turn him into a symbol. Out of sight, out of mind."

No one will forget Peeta. I'll be damned if I let them. Madge agrees.

I wish I could talk to Gale about this injustice but he's strangely reluctant to discuss Peeta. It's surprising; normally Gale will take up any opportunity to rail against the Capitol.

"I wish," I begin, and I stop. I don't know. All of this feels _wrong_ in a way I can't express.

Peacekeepers are more visible than ever. After the Games, a trainload of new officers arrived and began what they called an 'investigation' into the poisoned loaf of bread. Nearly everyone in the district has been questioned; several people have been taken for interrogation. I haven't yet seen any of them again. Gale narrowly avoided arrest, if only because nobody in the know wanted to lose one of their prime sources of fresh meat. If my sister wasn't a Victor, they might have arrested _me_.

Prim hasn't asked me if I did it. She hasn't asked Gale either. I volunteered my denial minutes after she walked off the train. No way would I risk Prim's chances or Gale's family that way. I won't lie to her, though, and say I hadn't wished at the time that he would have taken a bite. So I say nothing about it.

Madge is positive the Capitol sent Peeta the loaf. "President Snow must have guessed what he was going to do," she says. "But he didn't want to make it obvious that he wanted Peeta gone. So he's blaming it on us."

She glances my way and keeps talking in a low voice. "I don't think it was the first time, Katniss. That somebody tried to make a sacrifice. But they always got wiped out before they got the chance. Peeta was the first to get away with it."

In the short time since the Games ended, she's become outspoken in a way I would never have anticipated. She's beginning to sound like Gale. I'd always sort of thought Madge wanted to visit the Capitol, from the wistful way she's talked about it. That was before I knew about her aunt.

I guess she's right. Peeta wasn't the first decent person to be reaped in nearly seventy-five years. None of those decent people were ever Victors. Sacrifice is something the Capitol demands but is terrified of being freely offered. That is why they never accept volunteers. Because what does our punishment mean otherwise?

The thought of the bread makes me ill. I hate that Peeta died thinking we despised him. We did, for a while. I did. I'd stared at the screen, _willing_ him to fall in the Cornucopia, furious he hadn't opened the jar of tracker jackers, dismayed he didn't die in the tent fire. Gale had been apoplectic when Peeta joined the Careers that first day.

But then he saved Rue, and I realized he'd given himself up for lost from the very start.

And now I will never stop owing him.

A sensation of something narrowly missed, a possibility that never had the chance to materialize, leaves a hollow in my stomach. I don't know how to describe it. Like fate took a wrong turn somewhere. There was a boy who loved me, and he's dead now.

I have to turn my face away so I can wipe at an eye without Madge seeing. "I'll see you later," I mumble. The Village has come into view.

Madge nods and goes on to my house to see Prim and Mom. I take a different route and end up at Haymitch Abernathy's front door. The brass doorknob is smudged and dirty. His house is unlocked.

There's something I want to ask him.

The debris assaults the eyes, but it's better than it was. Out of gratitude, my mother has been helping around the house and she enlisted Hazelle Hawthorne's help in cleaning and making sure he's eating decent meals. I wonder if mentors in other districts are similarly showered with thanks from the families of surviving tributes. Haymitch doesn't always seem to know how to take it, maybe because Prim's the first tribute he's had who made it back alive.

After moving to the Village, Haymitch and I have established a weird kind of acquaintanceship. Prim stills looks to him expectantly for direction, and he's around whenever the cameras are. She's too sweet to banter drunkenly with, so he targets me.

"Hi," Haymitch greets me from a chair.

"You're still conscious," I observe. Usually by this time in the afternoon he's in an alcoholic haze.

He grimaces. "Give me a few minutes." A bottle of liquor is clutched in his hand.

Haymitch is his own particular kind of despondent today, abrasive and sarcastic. A mentor can never hope for anything better than being halfway successful; even with a Victor, they still depart the Capitol with one less student than they'd brought. It's a way of suppressing even the Victors, so that one way or another they're always a failure.

And I think he'd liked Peeta.

The mentor makes his way over to his table, steadying himself with his hands as he goes. Plopping down, he gives his bottle an ironic smile.

He must be the only mentor that's aided a tribute in engineering their own death. Judging by his pronounced gloom, this fact is not lost on him, but I want to tell him that Prim is his absolution, not whatever's at the bottom of his bottle. Peeta thought Prim and Rue were worth dying for.

I think he knows why I'm here. He doesn't seem about to raise the issue, so I do. Since we don't trust that our homes are not bugged, I wait until Haymitch follows me outside before I ask.

"Haymitch, did you know the bread was poisoned?"

His eyes are mocking. "Did you?"

It's the question no one's been willing to ask me. "If I could have figured out a way to kill him that wasn't so obvious, I might have tried," I say. I'm ashamed to say it, especially now, but it's the honest truth. Next to Prim, nothing matters.

Haymitch appears to believe me. But he hasn't answered my question. "Haymitch," I say more sternly, "_did you know_."

He hesitates in downing the rest of his bottle, but only for a moment.

"What I _knew_ was that he was a baker's boy who'd know his bread."

I step back. "Haymitch."

He rubs his eyes. "I didn't send it myself, so you know. Don't look at me like that. I'm betting Snow sent the bread. He always knows how to spot a troublemaker. He didn't get where he is now by letting backs stab themselves."

I'm shocked. "But you let it through. You risked Prim's life. Gale's family. All of District 12. For what?"

"Because, sweetheart," he says, staggering back into his home and falling into his debris-strewn couch, "things needed shook up."

At the time, I don't understand what he means. Not until the grain stops coming in, until the dressmakers stop receiving any bolts of cloth, until I spy a news report on the television in Mayor Undersee's study and hear Prim's fearful account of her Victory Tour with Rue do I realize what's happening.

Within a year, the war begins.

I wonder if Peeta was expecting this. Or hoped for it. Or if all he wanted was to spare two little girls. Maybe that's all we needed.

...

...

n: end. Thanks to everyone for reading and leaving their thoughts, you've all been wonderful :)


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